


Excerpts of the Forgotten

by Orlha



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Not evil Koschei
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-03-05 03:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 94,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3103301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orlha/pseuds/Orlha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[AU] A different take on alternate universes and the Tardis. Sorley was just a girl from an alternate universe that was not at all a whovian unlike her brother. She wasn't hoping to be taken on the blue box and she hadn't chose to go with him. The Doctor had to go and 'kidnap' her. Agreeing he had done it accidentally.  It was all an accident, at least he assumed so. Apparently something had been moving her so that she could have been at the right places at the right time. Why does everyone apart from the Doctor around her seem to know what exactly she is? Now she can't get back and is stuck travelling with the Doctor What is the Doctor's relation to her?</p><p>Rated T and up for swearing. The Doctor saves Koschei.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "Kidnapped"

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of this story sort of got stuck in my mind and I had to write it out. Hope you like it! Let me know what you think of it.
> 
> A few things to know when you read this.
> 
> 1\. This story has a lot of setting up, so it does seem aimless at times. It is meant to start off like a OC insert ffic but it really isn't. Sorley seems like one, but there really isn't one or could be somewhat debatable. Her identity will be slowly revealed throughout the adventures. Lots of hints!
> 
> 2\. There will be 11th Doctor and I will save Donna, but she will not travel much with the Doctor in this story.
> 
> 3\. The Master/Koschei has a main supporting role in this story and he's not evil.
> 
> 4\. I will have a mix of canon and non-canon stories and then some angstttttttt... well they're called character chapters!
> 
> 5\. Yes, there will be Doctor/OC (eventually) but not so.. obvious. There will be affectionate moments but no "She's my girlfriend!" sort and probably no kissing, but a lot of the "Just kiss her already!". More of the, he likes her, she likes him but neither of them does anything beyond that. Mostly due to 11's personality and various factors that will be apparent nearer to the end.

"Yo-u can't! The u-niverse will co-collapse! Time will un-unwrite itself," The floppy haired man sobbed. He lay on the ground, his hand clutching the large gaping hole. He was bleeding to death and he was on his last regeneration. No hope to survive this. The Doctor fought back a cough, trying to fight the shock that was coming on. Death was inevitable. He failed them all.

Amy. Rory. River. His beautiful Old Girl.

"Ple-ase do-n't take her from me," He pleaded. He didn't state who the her was but he didn't have to. Time could take his companions, disease and enemies could take his companions, but no one had succeeded taking his Tardis from him. He wasn't going to do so now. That was before she shot him straight in the stomach after taking out Amy and River with Rory was somewhere in the matrix dying as well. He crawled towards her, his orange blood staining the glass floor. He took handfuls of robe, tugging at it. "D-Don't do this." His voice shook so badly that he could his teeth chatter.

The Time Lady did not even spare him a glance. She shook his hand from her leg the way people shook dirt from their pants. "I can and I must," she told him. She turned to look at him, her red hair seemed to go up in fire as it caught the vortex light. Her eyes were dilated with a kind of obsession that the Doctor had seen in the mirror countless of times. The times where he spent breaking the mirrors in the Tardis because he couldn't bear to look at himself, she was just like him, hurting so badly that she was willing to do anything to bring it all back. Driven mad by Time war, driven mad by the silence that followed it.

"Ple-ase." He took a shuddering breath. Black spots danced across his vision. He was going to die here, on his Tardis, by the hands of the last Time Lady. The Doctor had come close to death many times and died on many of those occasions, the Silurians, the Sontarans even by forceful regeneration. He just never expected his permanent death to be by the hands of the last time lady. Why couldn't she understand? He placed his blood stained hand on her robes. "Do the Math again. It won't work. Please listen. I tried them too. I did after they- they-"

"Yes but you're only the Doctor and I'm infinitely better at this than you. Yes. I will succeed where you couldn't." She laughed manically. "Thirteen Mircospans. It was nice knowing you, Theta. I'm afraid this is where our friendship has to end. Not that it bothers me one bit. Good bye." She shifted, pulling down the lever. The time rotor began its dematerialization.

"Do-n't-" His body was heavy, he was so very tired. The Doctor found he didn't even have any energy left in him to speak so he begged the Tardis, his Old Girl, his wife. Please stop her. Please save Time.

A golden light overwhelmed his vision. The light from the heart of the Tardis. The one thing that his Tardis could do. She was doing her best to save this dimension and all the dimensions with time, the whole expanse of time and space.

He hoped this was a good death. It really should be a good death. He took a shuddering breath and let the darkness welcome him. His Old Girl would fix it.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The man stood there in his pin-stripe suit. He was not sure how long he had been staring at the monitor. He was not sure how long he had been searching: searching for a way to retrieve her, searching for a way to say goodbye to her. The thief did not cry, though the grief that gripped his hearts felt like they had been shattered to billions of pieces.

The man had lost track of time for the first time in his long life. It had been four days since he last ate, twelve days since he had a shower, twenty days since he slept. Time was inconsequential to him. Only the need, the wish, the desire to at least say goodbye to her drove him forward.

Help, she would help him find a way to say goodbye. If it eased the grief in him just a little. If she could safely bring the thief to his bad wolf, she would do it even if it meant the end of her. He did not acknowledge, did not comprehend, did not notice her desires. That mattered nothing to her. Acknowledgement from the thief was insignificant. She would first get him to eat and shower. She turned the monitors off, turned the console off. The thief grumbled, banging the consoles and swearing. These, she had all seen that will, that have, that had, that would happen. Tenses are difficult when one sees beyond the future, looks into the past and watches the present concurrently.

He sank to the ground, clasping his head between his legs. He was, he is sulking on her floor. She would not have it. She shakes, causing him to tumble into the stairway and into the bathroom. He was so angry. The thief raged against the sealed door for the ten minutes before giving up and taking the shower. She is not done yet. He does not want food, but she would not let him out until he ate the bananas on the table. He does so grudgingly.

He is unhappy with her until he realizes that she has found the perfect sun for him, the supernova that will allow him to transmit a message to his bad wolf. He almost jumps for joy, only to realize he has only but a few minutes to say goodbye. How much could he say in those few minutes? What should he, would he say in those few minutes?

He grieves as he sends the message to his bad wolf. He is happy to see her. He is happy to see her well. He is happy to see her alive. It is an immeasurable though small joy. He bustles through it, his hearts breaking even more as his bad wolf says those three words. He should say those three words, but he doesn't. He sheds a slow tear knowing that he would never have the chance to say it again. He leans against the console. She comforts him with the only way she knows. He would have never said it. She knows. She has seen the future. The bad wolf was never the one he was meant to be with. The bad wolf was there to heal him. She hums, helping him chase the bad dreams away with her soft humming.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Sorley blinked. The sunlight outside was filtering into the drawn windows. A blue sky. The smell of antiseptic coloured the air. It was an unfamiliar room. White walls, white bed sheets, Sorley had no idea where she was. Everything hurt. She blinked again, the room was still settling.

"Sorley?" The lady hovered over her. There was a relieved look on the lady's face. She was awfully familiar but for the life of her, Sorley found herself unable to bring up a name. "You're awake!"

She groaned as she tried to lift herself up. Her body felt unnaturally heavy. What did she do yesterday to tire herself out this much? She frowned, her mind bringing up a blank.

"Doctor!" The lady had turned away before she could ask the lady's name.

The man and woman came in. The man shone a light in her eye and did some other tests. They spoke to her about stuff, Sorley could not quite understand they were saying. It seemed odd to describe it, but her ears were still  settling . She captured voices, maybe relief and grief in the lady's voice but she seemed to otherwise just not understand. She blinked again, this time trying to bring her hand up.  Her hand . Why did her hand feel so disconcerting? She felt like she wasn't supposed to have a hand. That didn't make sense. She wiggled her hands. Her fingers moving as she did. Oh good. They work.

All that must have taken longer than she had expected for when Sorley looked up the man and the woman had left. Sorley turned to the lady sitting by her, finally finding her voice.

"Who are you?"

The lady that she did not recognize turned to her. Shock coloured the lady's face. "I'm your mum. You don't recognize me?"

The tired looking lady turned to the door. Sorley can hear her calling for the doctor,

"What happened?" she said in a voice too quiet when the lady, her mum returned. The lady had responded, was the lady really her mum? "Where am I?"

"You were hit by a car and fell into a coma. The Doctors were worried that you might never wake up." The lady, her mum gripped her hand tightly. She rubbed her nose bridge; dark circles outlined the lady's face.

"Oh."

Not the most descriptive word she could have used to describe what she was feeling. One could hardly fault her. Sorley pursed her lips. Her memory was still bringing up nothing. It was all so strange. What had she been doing before she had been hit? Sorley. At least she seemed to understand that Sorley was her name. It was strange. It was like she had expected her name to be something else. Strange. Everything was just strange, familiar yet unfamiliar. The blue sky outside, the white walls, the way her body felt. Existing yet not supposed to be existing. She stared around completely baffled.

"Sorley, are you alright?" Another man came up to her with a worried look. Grabbing my head with his large hands, he checked me up and down that seemed somewhat similar to that of Doctor Mellins had done.

Sorley suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. Seriously. Hospital, car accident, coma and then one asks if she's alright.

"Do you know who I am?" The man asked. Apparently he had a quick conversation with her mum while she was being sarcastic in her head.

"Should I?"

The man's face fell. "I'm Thomas. Your elder brother."

"Elder brother?" She inspected him. Tall, wide shoulders and used to be muscular but now it's mostly flabby, ginger hair with tons of freckles.

"Do we look alike?" Sorley asked, suddenly realizing that she had no idea how she looked like.

"We-" Thomas faltered. He looked terribly upset. "We look so similar that people mistake us for twins. But you know" He chuckled hollowly, "You can't be identical twins with different genders. Well mostly no. It's completely possible in rare cases but then the female would be-"

"Thomas," Her mum said, interrupting his ramble. "Sorry sweetheart, you know how Thomas gets when he talks about biology and medical."

He nodded embarrassed. It seemed that this conversation was entirely too familiar. Handing her a compact mirror, Sorley inspected her reflection. Large green eyes, a stammering of freckles, pale skin, ginger hair, thin lips, all in all looking almost exactly like Thomas. That felt right but odd.

"I'm sorry. I really don't remember anything. What happened before the car accident?"

The two glanced at each other. It didn't take a genius to see guilt in their face. Thomas ran his hand through his hair and cleared his throat a few times. Perhaps seeing how difficult it was for Thomas, her mum decided to answer her question instead. "You were on your way home and then you stumbled and the car hit you."

"Oh."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The jet-black rolled out far beyond her eyes could see. Tiny pinpricks that blinked studded the sky, illuminating the dark moonless night. Apparently Sorley had never been a fan of the night sky or things that required her to stay still too long. Her friends described her as someone out and about, out doing things, never really capable of sitting still. Something which she learnt that drove her to learn and master (attempted to) martial arts and various sports. The more she listened stories about herself, the more she sounded like an incredibly interesting person. It was a pity that it seemed a lot of it had been lost after she had woken up. Rather than being up and about, she was more inclined to sit around, waiting. Sorley wasn't very sure what she was waiting. All she knew that the world she knew didn't feel right.

Thomas said it was the disparity of memory. The loss of memory made it confusing for her and her mind was trying to cope by 'trying to stay still and regain its bearings'. It all sounded like hogswash to her and she told Thomas so. He smiled faintly at that. It seemed that that was something she would have said  back then .

"Sorley?"

Thomas had found her yet again and climbed up to join her on the roof.

"I should be asking why you are on the roof and telling you that it's incredibly dangerous, but I know it's not going to matter to you."

Sorley quirked her lips to smirk at him. The immense guilt flickered through his face as he gazed at her. Thomas turned away quickly, looking up at the stars.

"I didn't know you liked star-gazing. There was a time you used to tease me constantly about liking the stars and all the outer space stuff. I still remember you laughing at me when I tried to introduce you to Doctor Who and now you're watching that too. Oh see! See that star? That's the-"

"You should just tell me about it," she said casually. She glanced at him. It didn't take a genius to figure that there was something more to do with the accident. He always had a flash of guilty look when he looked her way or she mentioned something about not remembering. "It's going to eat you up if you don't."

He paused in his rambling. "Wha- I never could put anything pass you, could I?"

He sighed. He ran his hand through his hair. A guilty response or maybe a nervous response, Sorley noticed him doing it frequently especially when it had something to do with her. Was he the one who had hit her? Seemed the only logical answer.

"That night, I was supposed to send you home. I was busy and angry at you. Told you to hoof it home. Only six blocks." He cupped his head with his hands, resting his elbows on his knees. His voice breaking as he continued. "I regretted it almost as I turned round the corner. Came back to fetch you. It wasn't your fault that you caught Diana cheating on me. I shouldn't have been angry. Shouldn't have told you to walk home."

She pulled him into a hug, resting her head on his back. He was shaking now, grasping her hand tightly. "It's okay."

"No. It's not that. It's-" He gulped large breaths of air. He was a bloody fool. He had seen the muggers pull her into the alley and figured she would be alright. She was more than capable of handling two men and had proved it time after time. Never doubted her. It wasn't that.

"I parked on the wrong side of the road. You saw me standing there and had crossed the road. Then you stumbled. The head injury or something. I don't know. A car appeared out of nowhere and hit you. If I had parked directly outside the alley. If I hadn't told you to walk home. If I had sent you home like I promised to." He shuddered.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he whispered. "If only I had sent you home then you wouldn't be like this. You'd have all your memories. You would be... you."

"I believe I'm still me. Just-" she paused, searching for an appropriate word. "Different."

"I didn't mean that. It's just that it feels like I cheated you out of having a normal life. I don't know!" he half shouted, pushing her away.

She moved to the edge of the roof, her hands gripping the edge tightly. "Normal? Are you saying I'm abnormal now? I'm alive and it was because you were there. Isn't that all we need? There's a saying I heard from somewhere. There is no such thing as coincidences only predestined. There's nothing you can do but accept it and enjoy the fact that I'm alive. I'm still Leya."

Thomas gaped at her as she swung down back to her balcony. She called herself Leya. Leya! The old Sorley was still somewhere there. Right? He wasn't going to give up on that faint hope.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Recovering takes time.

Oh god, she was beginning to hate that sentence. She didn't want to be reminded every day that she felt so out of sync with the rest of the world. Manners. Gratitude. She found herself difficult to feel grateful with the reminder of her  accident  and  amnesia  looming over them, if there was such a word.

She can't remember anything in the past.

Someone had told that to her co-workers and now every time someone came up to her, they'd introduce themselves to her. Admittedly it did help quite a bit, but it didn't make up for the fact that she had utterly no idea how to do  work  for whatever she's supposed to be doing. Sorley felt incredibly useless trying to return to 'normal' life and every time someone offered to help her it only served to remind her how pathetic she had become. She had flipped her 'album of memories' that her brother, Thomas, had so 'lovingly' given her: Masters in Mathemathics, a picture of her sorority, the picture of her best friends which is questionable for she has yet to see or hear from them since she woke up.

She was most definitely becoming more cynical. Sorley hated herself for being so yet didn't seem able to stop it. She was not trying her

You'll remember eventually!

Thomas would say and push videos and pictures of her doing things she never knew she would have done. Her mum would hound after her about things she would have usually done. No, staying indoors and reading a book is not something  Sorley  would have done.

Why couldn't the world just leave her alone? If she had her way, she would leave this place right now. It was bad enough feeling cooped up, having to cope with her memory loss. She wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, away from all the pitiful looks, away from the smarting rejection that her family unintentionally gave her. She was so deep in her fuming that she did not notice the man walking out of the blue box which had appeared out of nowhere. She walked straight into the man or rather, the man walked into her and she fell.

"Blimey! Didn't see you there!"

"Didn't bother checking before opening the door, did you?" she spat out, before turning to glare at the man.

The pin-stripe suited man looked at her with an expression of guilt. Pin-stripe suit with red converse. She trembled. He was familiar, yet unfamiliar. She must know this man as well. Sorley allowed herself to be pulled up.

"Do I know you?" They both said at the same time. He chuckled and for the first time in the last few months, Sorley found her face twitching into a real smile. The feeling was incredibly exhilarating. She was excited by a smile, his or her own?

She turned to look at the blue box that said 'Police Box'. This too was awfully familiar, yet unfamiliar. She should come up with a term for it considering how many things were under that category.  Hazy fuzzy memory… thingy.

"I know this," she muttered, her hands reaching out to gingerly touch it. "Tardis."

"So I do know you. Should know you at least," the man said with a large grin. He thrust out his right hand. "Hi, I'm the-"

"Doctor. You're the Doctor." Doctor Who? She smiled slightly, her hand rising to shake his hand. His grip felt extremely familiar. His hand felt right. It sounded so odd when she said that in her mind, though there seemed no other way to describe it. He just felt right. Right for what, Sorley couldn't fathom. Her memory was making all the weird connections but none of the right ones that she was looking for.

Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor.

Her mind kept repeating that same word.  She knew his name but didn't know from where or how. She knew the blue box but couldn't remember why.  She knew his name but where? She knew the blue box; she had seen it on the television - vaguely. Everything about him struck her with a sense of overwhelming familiarity despite her stupid memory told her it was dissimilar to the television set. Everything about him felt more  real,  more so than her home and her family had been. It was a different sort of hazy fuzzy memory thingy, if that made any sense.

"So- how do I know you? Which year am I in by the way? This place, sort of doesn't feel right."

She frowned, her memory was still playing truant on her, refusing stubbornly to pull up the relevant information. "Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor who?" she clapped her mouth, horrified at her mouth running off before her mind could filter it out. "I didn't mean to- It's the first time I'm meeting you. If we met before, I don't remember."

He stared at her bewildered. He was quite a remarkable person and most of the time the people who travelled with him never really forgot him. It was always somewhere there, regardless if it was a dreaded memory or a good story to tell. He was saying that he had 'heard it all' a lot recently, but clearly he hadn't heard it all at all.

"Well- That's a first."

"I'm Sorley, Sorley Morin. It's 20 July, 2012." Year? He did just ask for the year right? Whoever asks for the year? She stared at him, trying to figure the strange man out.

"Sorley Morin-" he said it as though he was tasting wine, rolling it back and forth. No memory sprung to mind. He would have assumed that she had met him in her past and his future but if she was meeting him for the first time and already knew his name, perhaps she was one of the aborted timelines and he had met her then. That's why she was so familiar yet unfamiliar. "Nope. Nothing comes to mind."

"Oi Spaceman, you left me behind!" A ginger haired woman burst through the doors, almost hitting Sorley had the Doctor not pulled her back. "Oops. Did I just hit you?"

Sorley stared at her baffled. Another hazy fuzzy memory thingy.

"Ah Donna! Meet Sorley. Sorley, Donna."

"Just a few minutes behind and you've already hit on a poor innocent girl?" Donna rolled her eyes. "Nice to meet you."

Donna pursed her lips and before she could say anything further, the Doctor reached over to grip Sorley's arm, holding her up. "Are you okay? You're shaking real hard."

He pushed the doors open and led her to the jump chair. Sorley sat in the jump chair, her hand hanging tightly as though the jump chair was her lifeline. She knew the room. She had seen the room before. Where? The time rotor wheezed cheerfully.

"Well, look at that! She likes you," the Doctor exclaimed happily. He bounced on the balls of his feet, waiting for his favourite sentence. "Well- go on! Say it. I've heard it all."

"It's dimensionally transcendental."

"What. I was looking forward to its bigger on the inside."

Sorley scoffed at him. "Thanks captain obvious. I can see that she's bigger on the inside. What would be a better question is how big can it go? Is there a limit?"

"Wait. What?" The Doctor spun back to her, looking at her closely. "How did you know that term?"

"That was weird. How did I know that? It's not like I'm those science geeks who reads up on such stuff." She gaped at him. "That can't be. I mean. It's the first time I've been in here." She stood up, staring at the Time Rotor. Her memories shuffled about

"It's so weird," she muttered. "I know I said it, but I don't even know what that means."

"Doctor?" Donna called out from the bottom of the stairs. "Are we going to-"

Her words were cut off by the sudden slamming of the doors. "Wha-" Donna found herself hanging onto the edge of the railings as the Tardis took off. "What are you doing?"

"It's not me!" he yelled back. He was dashing about pushing random buttons. Clearly whatever he was trying to do wasn't working. "No no no! What are you doing?" he cried, narrowly grabbing the railing as the Tardis bucked.

"Doctor!?" Sorley yelled. Hysterical, that's what she should be. Maybe a panic attack, Sorley thought to herself as she found herself gasping for breath with each bucking. Oh please be over soon.

The Tardis jerked one more time, this time appearing to be somewhat half-heartedly.  Half-heartedly.  It was weird that she even thought that the Tardis had emotions. She supposed all machines had 'emotions', just like how her oven was rather temperamental.  She was so going to kill the Doctor.

"Where are we Doctor?" Donna asked him, before thwacking him hard on the shoulder.

"Ow! What was that for?" He moaned, rubbing his shoulder.

"For kidnapping the poor girl, you prawn!" Donna scolded. They looked across the room. The Doctor didn't think it was possible, but Sorley had gripped the jump seat so tightly that there were a finger marks on the white leather.

"Sorley?" The Doctor knelt down before her, placing his hand lightly on her arm. "It's okay. We're no longer in motion. You can let go now."

She exhaled loudly, trying to get her breathing under control. She was so not going to break down here over stupid and terrible piloting skills. She was going to let go down so she can beat the crap out of the Doctor. Yes, she was going to let go down.

Sorley felt the Doctor reach for her hands and gently untangled it from the torn leather. He patted her hands straight. "It's okay now," she heard him say softly. Her shoulders sank down in relief. Then she smacked him on the head.

"Ow! Why are you hitting me as well?"

"That's for the god awful piloting skills!"

"But it wasn't my fault!" he protested. The Doctor turned to fiddle with the console once he knew she was okay now.

"Well- the good news is that we're back in our original universe," he started.

To be honest, the Doctor already had guessed what had happened. After Donna and him had gotten stuck in the alternate universe, he had much difficulty procuring the parts to patch the Tardis so it could go through the rift and back to their original universe. Of course by procuring he meant they had gone through the planet of Bvirh and asked with the relevant pieces. Nothing was ever easy in the chronicles of the Doctor. The Bvirht wanted very particular shells in exchange for the parts which meant they had to go Aquaris which then sent them off into another adventure which led into another adventure. Linearly, they had spent five months in the alternate universe before they had gotten the right parts and fixed the Tardis. Finding the rift was very difficult and then he lost control of it and ended up meeting Sorley, which was brilliant in an odd way. He still couldn't figure why she was familiar to him. The Tardis recognized her as well. So she must have come into contact with him previously. He should faintly remember aborted timelines as well. It was just in the nature of Time Lords. Did it have to do with him being in the alternate universe?

"And the bad news is that whatever that had allowed us to pass in and out of that universe is now closed. She's now stuck in ours."

Sorley stared at him. The Doctor could see her jaws clenching, her mind working. She opened her mouth, hesitating then closing it again. She was stuck in this world. She didn't really like her world, but that was because everyone kept pressuring her, rejecting her. She would have eventually remembered and return to her life, been the best friend to her elder brother Thomas as her mum seemed to hint. No. She didn't think she was that close to her brother, but now the opportunity of even knowing her brother, her family and her strangely absent friends was gone. She was gone. She couldn't even tell them that she was alright. Sorley found herself unable to express anything. The strange numbness had spread over her.

"Sorley?" Donna asked. She pulled the girl into a hug, but she kept her green eyes on him. Her eyes said much more than her stiff posture and silent voice did.

"I could do with some tea," she said, her voice sounding more pathetic that she had envisioned it to be. She cringed inwardly at the tremble in her voice.

"I think it's the kitchen is this way," Donna smiled kindly.

Sorley turned her thoughts away from the whole  universe  thing. There were so many things she wanted to say, so many things she would probably regret saying. She had been so tired of her world: the world where everyone just looked at her with pitiful eyes, the world where everyone wanted her to be her old self, the world that seemed reject the person that she had become. She had a master in mathematics and she didn't even know what that meant. Everything that was her in the past was a blank. The brilliant mathematician Sorley that loved anything that had to do with the body, could outtalk almost anyone, and was relied often as a think tank. She was almost entirely unlike that old Sorley. Sorley had found herself entirely incapable of doing the most basic equations that her job required. Her co-workers had ended up picking up much of a slack and truth to be told, she more often than not, in the way rather than of help. Her boss then had 'politely' hinted that perhaps she should take more time off. Back at home, her family was always going about with the ' but you used to like this'.  They had good intentions but it had made her feel like she didn't belong anymore.

In a way, a very guilty way, she was very glad that she was free from that world. She could start 'anew' here, a life with people not knowing what happened and et cetera. They would not be judging her based on her past but rather what they saw her now. What she did with that here and now, would be all up to her.

Then there was that guilty part. The fact that her family and friends had invested so much in her and she just  disappeared.  She had not really done it willingly or even purposely, that wasn't her fault right?

"I was working H.C. Clements. I was together with this man, Lance. And we were supposed to be getting married and while I was walking down the aisle literally, I got teleported into the Tardis," Donna laughed. She recounted how she had met the Doctor and eventually joined him on his trips. All the time while she spoke, she watched the quiet girl. A small faint smile lingered on the girl's lips as she listened to Donna talk.

It wasn't a story with a typically happy ending. Sorley hadn't expected a happy ending to begin with. However the way Donna talked about her other adventures, it seemed like her eyes were alight. Adventures, that's what Thomas said that she had always been looking for. Perhaps if she had an adventure as well, she would recover some of her  old  self. Then there was the  strange warmth of familiarity from the Doctor and the Tardis blanketed her, telling her of safety, like strong warm arms that would never let her go. Yet it was the first time meeting him, them. Why?

"Donna! Sorley!"

She shook herself out of her thoughts as his voice echoed down the hallway calling out with excitement or maybe joy, Sorley wasn't sure. She had her bets on excitement.

"Donna! Sorley! Really! You'll want to see this!"

The Tardis jerked, launching them flat into the hallway. They could see the Doctor waving frantically at them. Okay, not frantically, exuberantly.

"Is he always like that?" Sorley asked.

"Mostly…" Donna gave the Doctor a stern look. "What did you do this time?"

He sulked. "Why do you always think I did something?"

"The last time you called for me so excitedly you found the Xuba- whatever you pronounce it. Where they used farts as currency. The smellier it was, the more value it had."

"Xuberatla and they had crystal waterfalls! That's just one! Name another time where-"

"The time we found zombie birds in Loclin. ONE WEEK! I had the smell of dead bird in my hair for one week!"

Donna continued, cutting the Doctor's protests. "The time where you said it was one of the greatest market place and landed us in the desert! And the Tardis lost power and we had to camp in the desert with 7 suns for 2 weeks. I'm still burnt from it! Another time you said Paris for breakfast. We ended up in North Korea and were chased by them all over the place."

"It's really not that bad!" He blanched. "Stop discouraging her, Donna!"

"And the running! He said it'd be fun but forgot to mention how much running you would be doing."

Sorley giggled at the Doctor's crestfallen expression. "Well, go on Spaceman! What do you have for us?"

His face lit up again. "Oh it's really good." He bounced to the doors. "Open it, Sorley! Beginner's luck!"

Donna rolled her eyes as she followed Sorley to the door. Gingerly, Sorley pushed the door open. She stood there staring at the view. There were no words to describe how magnificent the view was. The grass was iridescent, their colours changing as they fluttered in the wind. The sky was deep violet and shades of deep red running through the sky, leaping and fading with the wind, filled with multitudes of stars that seemed to smile at her with their twinkling lights. A strange smell hung heavily in the air. It was strange and thick but not unpleasant. Comforting and painfully reminiscent of something that Sorley couldn't figure. Crisp and dry, sweet and light yet heavy. She breathed deeply and then as she turned to call out to Donna, her voice was caught in her throat. In the sky was the large moon, larger than that she ever thought possible. Huge and aureate like a burning coil of gold.

"Welcome to Ralitektap."

"It's- it's-" She searched her mind for an appropriate word. Gorgeous was the understatement of the year. Breath-taking, mind blowing, amazing.

He smiled with a knowing smile. It was beyond words. "Every ten thousand years, the thirteen planets would align and move so close together that they almost touch."

Donna stood there, awe filling her face. All the two years of travelling with the Doctor and he still never failed to amaze her with the sights of the universe.

"The colour of the moon! It changes!" Sorley turned away in surprise.

"Yes. It is due to the atmospheric change between the planets that causes the change of colours. Each planet with a different type of atmosphere so when the chemicals in the atmosphere interact with each other, their colours change. That is what gives the 'moon' the scintillating effect. It's not really a moon but actually the neighbouring planet, Tialatk. And on Tialatk-"

"Doctor, rambling," Donna interrupted.

He grunted, disappointed of being interrupted in what seemed to be a good rant. "Fine, anyway that's why on this day, every one on the planet celebrates the festival of colours. Shall we go?"

"No running?"

"No."

"No jumping off cliffs?"

"No."

"No psychic messages?"

"No."

"No weird currency like farts?"

"DONNA!"

Donna leaned over and mock-whispered to Sorley, "Where ever he goes, trouble follows."

"Donna! You're being a very bad bad influence!" He scolded. Grabbing Sorley's hand, he marched forward. "You're banned from being a bad influence to Sorley!"

"Very matured, Doctor!" Donna called out, following a distance behind with a large smirk.

"I'm not that bad," he muttered quietly. His hand twitched as he said that. "I'm really not that bad!" He asserted, glanced at Sorley. She hid her lips under her hand, trying to stop herself from bursting out laughing in no avail. Tears were trickling down her face as she struggled to stop herself from laughing. She was laughing at him! The audacity!

"You're laughing at me," he groused.

"It's funny!"

"Making fun of me is not funny!" he pouted. His mock bad mood dissipated in an instant as they approached the first stall.

"See!" The Doctor pulls up a shimmering blue cloth. "They wrap themselves in colours and at midnight which is in one hour when the alignment is completed, they will dance and sing."

"Dance and sing?"

"Yes! All thirteen planets will sing in harmony. The shared atmosphere will reverberate the song throughout the thirteen planets. The reverberation will induce the soil in each planet to reconstruct themselves to their original potential. This in return will cause the vegetation on each thirteen planets to grow vigorously."

"So it's like a reset button?"

"It is!" He beamed, rocking back and forth on his heels. "Here wear this. Everyone wears one to participate."

He wrapped the blue cloth deftly around her and gazed at her with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "Perfect. We'll take it. And this."

He strode towards Donna and wrapped her in the lavender cloth.

"Oh my god! This is beautiful! Where did you get it from?" Donna caressed the fabric. "It's so soft and smooth."

"Over there, Sorley got a blue one too. It's for this ceremony they do when the planets are in alignment where all the thirteen planets sing together-"

Donna turned and pursed her lips. "Doctor, I think she's gone."

"-the song will reverberate and the conglomeration of harmonies will-"

"Doctor!" Donna swats him, hard. "Sorley's gone!"

"What?"

  
  


 


	2. Beasts from Haven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorley was lost the found and oops, there's the Doctor falling from the sky. Oooh, big pretty birds.

Sorley hadn't planned to wander off. She had been standing at the very same stall that the Doctor had left her at, pursing through accessories and jewellery that the stall had to offer. That was until a man came up to her. Well, he was a male humanoid alien. Red skin with large blue eyes that reminded her strongly of her neighbour's husky.

"Hello." He bowed slightly and did a movement much like how Sorley had seen those gentlemen do in those period movies with his hand. His fingers were creepily long. She wasn't trying to be prejudiced against people with long fingers but those fingers were incredibly long and extremely odd in her opinion.

"Hello," She smiled slightly at the man though it probably was more of a grimace than a smile. He wasn't put off but her odd smile, in fact he took a step closer to her. Sorley felt his bright blue eyes scrutinizing her every defect. It felt like he could see through her soul. Breathing shallower, Sorley forced herself not to take an involuntary step back as the man took another step towards her, her eyes darted around her. Surely aliens had a concept of personal space. Definitely creeping her out with that stare. It was a bustling market place, surely he would be at least put off by the fact that there would be plenty of witnesses to whatever he has in mind for her.  _Prejudice!_  She scolded herself. Just because the man, er alien, had creepily long fingers and had red skin didn't mean he was out to get her, right? Skin colours were a thing in this planet. She had been so infatuated by the scintillating colours of the wind that she had not thought to ask if different skin colours were a common thing here. The habitants of the planet seemed to have multi-colours of skins and hair and eyes, though their features were largely similar with minor differences. Red, green, blue.

"Er- can I help you? " Sorley asked in a shaky voice.

"You are one of the three, are you not?" he asked. He had a high pitched, lilting voice which was unusual for most men she had known. It might be something normal here. She had nothing to compare it to. Considering the features and skin colour, anything was possible.

She looked at him puzzled. Taking a step away from the strange alien, she replied, "Sorry, what?"

"One of the three. You know- the trio of the legend. "

"Three what? What legend? "

"They come riding abreast on the beast from haven, bearing the starlight in their wake. Each carrying a different burden, the past, the present, and the future. The sister, the wife, and the lonesome. The skies will rise, the songs will echo because of them."

She stared at him. The alien must be mad. Who ever comes up to a random stranger and starts muttering weird legends. She glanced at the shopkeeper, startled at his serious gaze at her.

"Sir Jaxsom, you th'nk 't's 'er?"

"You know this man?" She asked the shopkeeper. Oh the back of her neck was tingling with that must be GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE.

"He's the 'igh pr'est of Iscaica." Seeing Sorley's blank look, the shopkeeper continued, "Tha's the abbey th' pres'des the Oratorio. Oratorio is the ceremony of th'teen songs."

"The what?"

Meanwhile Jaxsom had circled around her, still staring at her intently. "It's most definitely her. Sorry Miss, I'll need you to come with me. See, there's a prophecy about the three… " He touched her face and then everything went black.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

She was angry at her thief. He had allowed another Time Lord turn her into an abomination.  _Paradox Machine._  It had hurt so much. Her thief was unable to comprehend her. She was just a sentient  _machine_  to him. She was alive and not simply  _sentient._  He was just like all the other Time Lords. She would have to do something that make him recognize that. She has seen, sees the future. She know soon everything will change.  _For better or for worse_  as his strays says time to time.

He stood there staring down at the console with a pensive look. He was hurt that his stray had decided to stay behind. She never liked his strays much, but at least they helped to numb the pain and guilt that he felt so heavily. If only he knew the truth about the war. She could not tell him the truth. For all his Time Lord's pride, he could never fully understand her. He felt the nudges and fleeting emotions of hers with his mind, but was incapable of hearing and seeing her words. Like many of the other Time Lords, they never fully understood how special she was. They had assumed that she was faulty rather than different.

She would just have to make him understand that.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The Doctor hurried to the stall where Sorley had been standing. "Have you seen the girl that was with me?" he asked the shopkeeper.

The shopkeeper grinned. "The other two!"

The Doctor glared at the stocky man. "What have you done with her? Where is she?"

"Oh, don't be mad! Sir Jaxsom took 'er to Iscaica of the Lake. Be an honor. Th're're say'ng th't the gods are mad. "

"And you think taking my friend is not going to me make me mad? Let's go Donna." He grabbed Donna and stormed into the bustling crowd. His grip was painfully tight on her wrist.

He was furious but not as much as he was worried for his new companion. The habitants of Ralitektap and those from the constellation of Feodedun had always been peaceful. What had happened to make them kidnap Sorley? So wound up in his thoughts, he barely heard Donna until she slapped him hard on the back of his head.

"Let go of me, you prawn! You're hurting me!" she grumbled. Donna rubbed her wrist.

"Sorry." He scratched his sideburns, looking peevishly at her.

"We'll talk about this when we're back on the Tardis," she said sternly. "Right, let's go spaceman!"

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Sorley found herself lying on a stone pallet with a large open air starlight window above her. That was until she sat up and realized it was less of a pallet and more of a sacrificial altar.

"Okay. Trying not to be jump to conclusions here, but I'm fairly certain this just screams sacrificial altar," she mumbled. She grabbed her head, feeling a little dizzy and nausea.

"Now all I need is the blood and the freaky priest."

"You're awake," the same lilting voice stated behind her.

She snapped her head around. "Jeepers, I didn't see you there. Dear god, is that... blood." She pursed her lips staring at the cup that Jaxsom held in his hand. It was dark crimson red, almost opaque, and very bloody looking.

' _I really need to keep my mouth shut.'_  She mentally face-palmed herself.

"Why would I bring blood for you? Is that what humans like to drink?" he asked with a puzzled look.

"So it's not… blood. Just to be sure."

"It's the juice of jubajubejuba fruit. A bit sour and tangy but otherwise sweet. It'll be good for the nausea." He handed her the cup with an expectant look.

She took the cup and sipped it. It was very good. For all its odd colouring, it tasted better than anything she had before and that includes apple juice. Her churning stomach calmed slightly at its taste.

"So uh, what happened and why did you kidnap me?"

"Kidnap? I did no such thing. I apologize for what happened. It seems that my eagerness to convey you the prophecy of the three telepathically had caused you to faint. It would have been entirely inappropriate to leave you lying there so I had carried you back to the church. I was not aware that you were not used to telepathy and tried to give you too much information at a go."

Sorley blinked. "Then why am I on a sacrificial altar?"

"A what?" He looked at her. He looked at what she pointed.

"You know, sacrifice? Where you kill an innocent and give it to the gods."

"We do not practice this  _sacrificial_  thing here. This is one of the medical wards."

Pointing to the starlight window, he said, "When the moon rises above and reflects through those crystals, it boosts the mind and body to fight against ailments. It is a state-of-the-art treatment. These crystals are incredibly difficult to procure."

She looked sheepishly at him. "I didn't mean to offend you. So Uh, what were you trying to show me that caused me to black out?"

"Ah." He stilled his indignant motions. "Every ten thousand years, the planets would align and the atmosphere would mix. This will cause a particular harmony to amplify the recovery of the planet. However due to the solar winds, one of the planets is out of alignment. The harmony will not bounce."

"What has that got to do with me?"

"It's not you. It's the three. The prophecy states that the three will come riding abreast the beast from haven. Oh it's easier to show you," he griped. He clenched his fist with a loud sigh. "If I tried again, it might cause you to have a brainstorm and that would be bad."

He paced the small room mumbling. A loud bell sounded. "Oh this is not good. There's only forty-five minutes left to the Oratorio. Stay here! You'll probably be still feeling ill, just lay down a little longer. I won't be long."

He hurried out of the room through the dark curtains. The sky above was darkening to midnight blue. The shades of the wind on the other hand were lightening pale blue and yellow. It was extremely magical just lying there watching the wind dance across the window.

"This is almost pleasant, if it weren't for the stupid stomach churning and dizziness. I mean, it couldn't get worse, right?"

As fate would have it, it could get a lot worse. Sorley found herself glowing which was a bit freaky cool except it came with her floating – towards the window.

"I just couldn't keep my mouth shut, could I?" She screamed, swearing a whole string of vulgarities in every language she knew as the wind picked her up and away.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

But of course, she was far too busy screaming to hear the Doctor yelling for her. He had just approached the church when he saw a bright glow floating above the church. He saw her red hair sparkling and was in awe of it, until he realized she was being carried away by the wind.

"We need to get back to the Tardis and get Sorley!"

"DOCTOR!" Donna screamed. The Doctor spun around, feeling Donna's bruisingly painful grip on his arm. She was floating too and about to drift away in the light breeze, was it not for her grip on the Doctor's arm.

"Blimey. Donna, hold on!" He pulled her closer, gripping onto her arm and waist tightly.

"What do you think I'm doing, you prawn!"

The Doctor managed to pull his sonic screwdriver out and whirred it at her.

"What's happening Doctor?"

"Wellllll… Humans release minute quantities of Tyrium radiation that are almost not detected. Since it is a normal thing for humans to have such thing, they write Tyrium radiation off as a body function. Tyrium radiation is actually healthy for humans. It is part of their immunity system and aids metabolism. In this solar system, instead of Tyrium radiation, the residents produce something called Nefiram. These are available in larger quantities, the chemical reaction is slow but with prolonged exposure to Nefiram, it induces a change in the - "

"Doctor. SPEAK ENGLISH." Donna struggled to resist her urge to smack the Doctor. She was slowly losing her grip and extremely glad that today she had decided to wear trousers. Hovering forty-five angles in mid-air was not something she had expected to happen today, but she as pretty sure if she had worn a dress or a skirt, everyone in the market that was ogling at her right now would have the front seat row to her pants.

"OK, how do I dumb this down. the minute quantities of Tyrium radiation reacted with prolonged exposure to Nefiram particles in the air would cause a change in weights-"

"Doctor, it doesn't matter! can you fix it or not? "

"Donna. Whatever you do, don't let go," the Doctor said in his calmest tone.

"I've no intention of doing that anytime soon. In fact, I'm fairly certain you might even need to pry my hands open when you get me down from here. You can do that right?" she exclaimed, exasperated at his repeated words to  _hold on_  and  _not let go._  Like she would voluntarily let go. Who in the right mind does that?

"Well… I probably could. But we're sort of very high above the ground. I'm going to try and summon the Tardis in front of us. I need you to hold on very tight."

"You can summon the Tardis?"

"Of course I can, what kind of time lord will I be if I could even do that?" He searched his pockets for the key.

"You can SUMMON THE TARDIS?" she yelled.

"Blimey, Donna. I do enjoy being able to hear from my right ear. I would appreciate it if you refrained from screaming in my ear."

"Why didn't you summon the Tardis when we were being chased by the dwarfs the last time?"

"They are not called dwarfs, they were Giumerans. And if you remember correctly, someone broke my sonic screwdriver."

"Or the time when we were falling off the cliff? You know? It would have been awfully helpful to not fall thirty metres in sludge. Did you know how long I spent in the bath trying to get rid of the awful smell?"

"Six hours and twenty three minutes. Now is not the time to discuss about this, Donna," he said flatly. The darn key was missing in his pocket! He'd have to remember to actually put it on a string around his neck next time.

"You actually counted?" She stared. "You actually counted!?"

"Well… I thought you might be drowning in the bathtub and tried to enter. The Tardis assured me you were still alive."

She reached to throttle him in the neck. "You what?"

"Ah-hah! Found it!" He pulled the key out.

"Donna! What did I say about holding on?" He hollered. He flailed frantically as he fell through the sky. The Tardis appeared just several metres above the ground with her doors wide open to catch him. The Doctor fell through the Tardis, slamming his elbow into several doors before landing into the library's pool. He floundered a bit in the water, coughing water as he heaved himself onto dry land.

"B-brilliant catch, old girl," he huffed, getting to his feet. "Time to grab Donna then Sorley."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Sorley was being to tire of swearing, that and she also ran out of new vulgarities. She floated in the air, drifting along. The civilization below was very pretty. The grass shimmered in the wind and the lights looked rather like fireflies. It was not anything like the moon which was now even bigger now that she was floating towards it, but still pretty in its own right. What would she give for her own room and a cup of tea. Come to think of it, the tea that Donna had made for her was still half drunk. Perhaps she could warm it up when and if she ever got back on the Tardis. Her chances of doing either seemed very low at the moment.

"Well this was sort of anti-climatic. I thought it'd be a bit more RAWR!" she mumbled, twiddling her thumbs. She was far too high up in the Sky to do anything or get anyone's attention and she didn't have anything on her that would be of use. When she woke up this morning, she had not expected to bump into a pin-striped man, enter a spaceship that had another dimension in herself, be kidnapped to another galaxy with no way of getting home, visit an alien planet, be kidnapped by an alien and then float into the sky. All she had in her pocket was a stick of gum, her rather useless phone, her wallet that was equally useless and a pocket watch. Maybe if she blew the gum into a large enough bubble, no its not it'd be filled with helium. Wait, she wanted to get down, not float higher. She mentally smacked herself and investigated the other things. Her phone had no signal and had two bars left. Oh, her cabbage on her game was ready to be harvested. Not that that was going to be useful. She flipped the pocket watch, tracing the pretty circles with her thumb. Her memory was still rejecting her command to pull up relevant information to the pocket watch. No idea how she got it and how it ended up in her pocket.

"Bloody hazy fuzzy memory thingy," she sighed and pocketed the items back into her pockets.

"Right. It most definitely could get a lot worse than this. There could be a thunderstorm or a stormy wind or something…" She clapped her mouth in horror as she said it. Her eyes scanned the sky for something that would prove her words wrong yet again. Heaving a big breath of relief, she spun herself upwards to watch the breath-taking sky. Everything was not so bad save for the very imminent possibility of floating out of the atmosphere and possibly run out of air.

"Yep not so bad."

Sorley watched the top of the atmosphere draw closer as a stronger gust of wind blew her higher. She kicked and tried the Superman pose, but there was nothing she could do to change her direction or altitude. It was then she noticed a large white thing flying towards her. It was bigger, larger than any animal she had seen. The only thing that was remotely comparable to it was a truck, a huge industrial truck that or the six elephants arrange in two columns. it drew level with her and she realized that it was much like a cross between a deer and a bird. The large wings that appeared to span over several metres were pure white, its antlers were sea green with freckles of blue. The antlers spread out in a huge and majestic way, sprouting and winding its way around its head like a crown. Its purple eyes that seemed to glow. She gaped at it, transfixed by the way the moonlight seemed to fall onto its wondrous form.

As her fingers reached out to touch it, the little sparkling glow that enveloped her pulsated and covered the creature.

"You're so… beautiful."

Sorley kicked the air, mimicking how she saw the Sky divers did on the teley or tried to. It hadn't work earlier a snide voice said at the back of her head. Regardless, whatever she did had gotten her on the creature's back.

"To the doctor!" She laughed, tugging a little to the left to indicate the direction she wanted the creature to go. She hadn't exactly expected it to work. Sorley had hoped it was similar to a horse or something despite its beauty beggaring for a description that would suit it. When it tilted left, it wasn't exactly her type of thing to do, she couldn't resist letting a loud whoop.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Donna was floating in the air. Her fingers grasped the empty air after realizing she had accidentally released her death grip on the Doctor in her attempt to strangle the Doctor. He really did deserve being strangled but not falling to his death. She watched him tumble through the air in horror.

"Oh my god! Doctor!"

"Donna!" Donna heard a familiar female voice behind her. Wrenching her head away from the falling Doctor, she came into sight of a large white deer bird thing flying towards her and Sorley dwarfed by the size of the creature waving gaily at her.

"Sorley! Thank god you're alright. Oh god! Save the Doc-" she turned back just in time to see the Tardis catch the Doctor.

"Grab my hand!"

"It's a beautiful deery bird or would you say birdy deer. Sort of like a unicorn with wings and a deer body?" Donna remarked once safely sitting on the creature. "Why aren't we floating anymore?"

Sorley shrugged. "I don't know. I'm just glad we stopped floating."

"Oh brilliant!" The Doctor laughed as he popped his head out of the Tardis. "You found an Ariaxalaforious! They're so rare. I've only seen them five times."

He popped on his glasses and inspected the creature. "She's a beauty."

"An Ariaxala what?" Sorley repeated. Her tongue felt clumsy when she tried to repeat the word.

"Ariaxalaforious. Basically Solar deers."

"Solar deers." Sorley deadpanned.

Donna frowned at the Doctor. "Why are you soaking wet?"

"You didn't hold on when I told you implicitly to  _hold on_ , the Tardis had to soften my fall by dropping me into the library's pool."

"The library has a pool?" Sorley asked. She stared at him, her eyes large with an incredulous look. "Why is there a pool in the library?"

The Doctor's reply was cut off by a sudden appearance of more Ariaxalaforious. He let out a hoot. "A whole herd of Ariaxalaforious! Molto bene! I've never even see a whole herd!" He clambered behind Donna excitedly.

"Doctor. You're dripping wet, " Donna sighed exasperated, feeling her back becoming wet as well.

"This is exciting! On the back of an Ariaxalaforious in the middle of a whole herd! Ariaxalaforious are very rare and extremely shy. They're widely revered as sacred beasts in many solar systems. There's so few of them and they take incredibly long to fly from one system to another that many habitants of the planets consider themselves lucky to even see them."

The Doctor gazed at the creature with awe and excitement that Donna for a moment would have been excused for mistaking the 900ish year old spaceman for a four year old kid that had just met Santa.

"Beast from haven?" Sorley said with a questioning tone.

"Oh yes! You could describe them as that. Pure white, glowing in the light," he patted the white feathers.

"Doctor. The priest said something about a prophecy."

He looked up. "What?"

Sorley scratched her head. It was a lengthy prophecy after all. "They come riding abreast on the beast from haven, bearing the starlight in their wake. Each carrying a different burden, the past, the present, and the future. The sister, the wife, and the lonesome. The skies will rise, the songs will echo because of them."

"So this is the beast of haven?" Donna asked.

"I suppose so since he said so. The priest was insistent on the three."

"The three…" The Doctor trailed off with a pensive look. "The skies will rise."

"The planet is out of alignment."

"What?"

"The planet is out of alignment, " Sorley repeated thinking that he had not caught her statement.

"Yes, yes. I heard you. This is bad. There's only thirty minutes left ot the Oratorio. I could use the Tardis to tow the planet into alignment, but to get the base code for the planet would take an hour minimum. Oh this is bad. "

"Doctor, can't they just sing later? You know, like postpone the ceremony?"

"The planets are only on alignment for 10 minutes." The constellation of Feodedun was highly dependent on the Oratorio. To miss the Oratorio would cause an unprecedented devastation to the habitants of Feodedun.

"Oh! Brilliant! " The Doctor shouted with glee.

The two girls stared at him with puzzlement.  _Mood swings._ donna mouthed to Sorley with a shrug. They giggled as they watched the Doctor. He had clambered onto another creature and turned to the sight of them giggling with a frown.

"What's so funny? Donna get on another Ariaxalaforious. We're going to save the solar system," he grinned.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Sorley had woken on the wrong side of the bed today. She had gone downstairs to grab a mug of tea and had planned to stay at home to finish the book she had been reading followed by a marathon of Lord of the Rings. Only Thomas and her mum had been insistent that she should  _go out and enjoy the sun._  She had then asked why couldn't she just read the book in the garden and it became clear that when they meant  _go out and enjoy the sun_ , it meant do things that she, Sorley, the old Sorley that is, would have done. The old Sorley would have gone out, enjoy the farmer's market, try the weird reverse bungy jumping attraction that had just opened, maybe hit the gym, get into a fight, break a bone or two (but not her bones) and come home in time for supper. She had then left the house in a huff, feeling utterly rejected by the two and angry at the world for  _this_  to have happened. So deep in her smarting rejection and anger, the Doctor had walked straight into her (or she had walked straight into the Doctor, depending on who was telling the story) and that was when it all started. _Kidnapped_  onto a spaceship by an alien and his companion, saw wondrous planet Ralitektap, fainted because of overexertion of telepathy used on her, turned into some glowing human balloon that was due to the Doctor's negligence to realize that the innate chemicals of their bodies would have created this reaction, floated almost out of the atmosphere, met the extremely rare Ariaxalaforious, rode on top of the leader of Ariaxalaforious at the head of a herd of twenty thousand Ariaxalaforious, flew through space on top of the beast, had a bird eye view (pun not intended) of the thirteen twelve planets in alignment, herded the herd (pun intended) to use the solar waves that they generate while drifting through space to push the last planet into alignment.

Sorley was almost sorry that the adventure was almost over. The song of the habitants wafted in the air, the tenor, the soprano, the sound of the young and old, a conglomeration of voices that was far too beautiful to describe. The ground beneath her shifted. She heard the Doctor behind her assure Donna that it was entirely normal. From the short grass, sprouted pale red flowers; growing waving their petals in the air, filling the fields and roads with their cheery colours. They grew and grew until Sorley found herself dwarfed by the flowers that were as tall as her. The ceremony singing had stopped but the people were still dancing on the platforms and there were people still playing the instruments.

"Did you enjoy yourself?" The Doctor asked.

Sorley nodded with a large smile on her face. "When I woke up today, I never expected that I'd be out there. A whole universe away and probably billions of light years away from my time, in space. It was amazing. I'm almost sad that we have to leave."

"I'm sorry about what happened. I didn't mean to take you away from your universe. I'll try my best to find a way to get you back."

"There is no such thing as coincidences only predestined," Sorley only replied with an odd look on her face.

He looked at her baffled at her calm demeanour. "Most people would be screaming, yelling or smacking me. Usually all the above but not this… calm."

"Oh I take it that you've done this before?" she quirked an eyebrow at him.

"Well… yes… once. Maybe twice. Still, you're rather calm about it."

She chuckled. "I like to use that line as my belief. Apparently the old me used to say that too."

"The old you…?"

"Long story short, I got into a car accident, lost my memory and became a new person. I don't remember a lot of things. It's easier to accept things as it is and move on from there. If I had not gotten in the car accident, I wouldn't have lost my memory, I wouldn't have gotten into the argument with my brother, would not have stormed out of the house and met you. It was a chance in a billion. That makes the fact that we met and that I'm here, a miracle."

"That's… an interesting way to see it."

"I don't know for sure. Maybe even if something changed, I might have still met you. We can't see the future. But this right here is amazing." She swung her hands out to the sky and the large moon. "I'm not sure about then, but right now, I wouldn't have given up for this experience out for anything."

"Does that mean you'll stay?"

"I don't have anywhere to go even if I didn't want to."

"I could always start you a life somewhere on Earth if you truly didn't want to." The Doctor didn't want her to go. There was something familiar about her plus she was a mystery and he loved mysteries.

Pulled herself from watching the people dance, she asked, "Is it always so… magical?"

He frowned. His face was grim. "I try to most of the time," he said quietly. "But I won't lie about it. It is dangerous."

"And there's lots of running."

"Yes. Lots of running. But there's all of time and space to see and it's beautiful." He rocked on his heels with a hesitant look. He could probably visit her a few times if she truly wanted to stay on Earth. He had seen that look before, the look on Donna's face when she had rejected him the first time.

"Sign me up for it then."

"Really? Brilliant!" He hugged her wildly. "Oh! We should go to Felspoon! Donna loved it there too. The mountains move and Oractirum too! The trees dance in spring. It's very beautiful."

"Doctor. Doctor! I can't breathe!" she gasped.

"Oh! Sorry! So sorry! Come on! No time to waste!" he said, pulling her into the Tardis. "Donna! We're leaving!"

"Where are we going?" She asked, entering behind them.

"Oh, I don't know. How about Felspoon or Oractirum? Or space florida?"

"How about all three?"

"Allons-y!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you'd enjoyed this one as well! Please let me know if you enjoyed or disliked anything. :) Feedback is greatly appreciated.


	3. Sealed Memories

"Doctor!? I can't hold on much longer!" Sorley screamed. He said it was dangerous. She never thought it was  _this_ dangerous. Who was she kidding? She said she had signed up because between the choice of living on Earth in a place she had never been to and without knowing a single person, and the choice to stay on the Tardis seemed more preferable. Donna was a great person to hang out with. She was funny and probably everything her best friend would probably have been. Yes, the key word here is probably. Three months on board the Tardis and Sorley had yet to remember much of her past life.

The Doctor said it was a museum. A boring museum, he never said there might be live exhibits that enjoyed feasting on humans. The Doctor lies. Oh yes, her memory did finally did some weird kick start the other day. There was some stuff she remembered vaguely while watching Doctor Who on the teley with Thomas. This never happened on the television! Not that she'd know, she watched only  _some_ episodes and that bow-tie doctor.

Back to her situation, Sorley was hanging off a pole that was ten meters in the air with the  _exhibits_  standing below her snapping their mouths at her. Every time they jumped and snapped their mouths at her, she swore she could feel the brush of air on her foot. Donna wasn't doing very well either but she definitely in a better position than her. At least she wasn't hanging for her life  _literally._

"Spaceman, right now would be a real good time to hurry and put them back in their pens."

"Donna, I'm trying to weld the caudal hyperspace plasma matter to the distal subsection quantum sensors. It is an extremely delicate process. It has perfect so that sparking will not occur when exposed to their fluctuating energy levels."

"All I hear is blah blah blah, whine. Hurry up, I hear my ledge creaking and Sorley is slipping!" Donna barked. She crawled down the tiny ledge, trying her best to balance and grab Sorley that was slipping further down the pole she was holding. It really wasn't a pole and more of a light fixture with dangling bits.

"Maybe you need to lose some weight."

"OH you did not just say that, Spaceman!"

"Doctor, tell me you're done," Sorley gasped. Her hand slid down a little further.

"Oh yes!" He hollered over the sounds of the alarms. The Tallelta were sucked back into their stasis pens. "I got you!"

He reached in time to put out a large cloth that caught both Sorley and Donna.

"Next time, we're going to the beach," Donna grunted, storming into the Tardis.

"I concur with her sentiment," Sorley groused. "Not that I dislike the excitement and adrenaline, but can't we ever go somewhere without the I-am-going-to-die experience?"

"I dare stay Donna's right about the travelling?" She laughed loudly, rotating her shoulder stiffly.

He looked at her with serious gaze.

"I meant the running! All the running!" Sorley replied his unasked question lightly with a grin. "Far more than I thought possible. I think I might be able to do those cross-country marathons without breaking a sweat now. "

"Though I probably was a runner of some sort in the past," she frowned at the thought. She had managed to keep up on her first few adventures. Donna had been very vocal about her surprise that Sorley had kept up.

"Sorley." He stopped in front of her, gently holding her shoulder. "If you want, I can unlock your memories."

She looked up. There was something in his warm, dark brown eyes that sent a strong déjà vu feeling within her. All the pain, the guilt, the things he had seen and done, all swirling in those eyes. She had seen those old eyes.

"Déjà vu again," she whispered.

"Sorley. You're a mystery. Sometimes you look at me like you know me all my life. It's not just that," he leans against the door, his eyes watching her intensely. "The Tardis likes you far more than any companion ever step foot in her. Sometimes she likes you more than me."

He winced at the memory. The both of them had gotten into a petty argument about tea which evolved into a large argument about something that he really couldn't remember now. Then when he had stepped out of the kitchen, the Tardis had moved the kitchen so far from the console room that it took him forty minutes to walk there.

"Do you remember anything?"

She averted her eyes. He sighed, "Don't you want to remember? I could do it for you. It won't hurt at all."

"I don't know."

"You… don't know?" He had a quizzical look. Most humans were eager to know their past, who they were and what they did. What's that quote they like to say? A man with no past has no future.

"I do yet I don't. What will happen if I remember everything? Will I no longer be this Sorley but a new Sorley? Will I forget everything that I became here? I rather like who I am right now even though I don't remember things well. Wouldn't it be like dying?" Sorley trembled. Shaking her head, she backed into the console.

"I don't want to remember if it means killing the person I am now," she said in a soft voice before fleeing down the hallway.

The Doctor ran his hand through his hair. His mind racing with what he should do.

"Go talk to her."

He looked up, surprised to see Donna standing at the hallway. "I heard all of it" She replied before he could form the words.

"Seriously spaceman, I'd talk to her but I don't know how this  _unlocking memory_  thing going to work. Not to mention, it'd be rather awkward if I told her I heard everything." She raised her cup of tea to her mouth with a small guilty laugh.

He hurried down the Tardis, telepathically asking the old girl to show him where Sorley had gone to. Perhaps the Tardis had understood his need or that Sorley hadn't wanted to be by herself that much, but as he ran down the hallway, one of the doors swung open.

"Sorley?" he called out tentatively, setting into the room. This was the first time he had been into her room. The Doctor never really made a point to see companion's rooms unless he was very unsure about the companion. How much the Tardis liked a particular companion could say a lot about the companion unless they were an anomaly like Jack was. The Tardis obviously like Sorley, so he was never bothered. He just never expected that the Tardis liked her this much.

Her room was less of a room and more of an apartment itself. Her windows were large. It even opened up a garden with blue hydrangeas, large maple trees and even a slow meandering river. It didn't have a kitchen but it had two more doors which the Doctor guessed one was a closet and the other probably a bathroom. If the bathroom was anything like the room, it'd be enormous.

"Doctor?" Sorley had came into her bedroom when she heard him call. She hadn't meant to throw a tantrum like that. "I'm sorry about just now. It's just that... it feels that you didn't feel the me now was good enough. Thomas did that too. He probably didn't mean it."

She shook her head. "No. He didn't mean to make me feel that way. He did anyway."

"I didn't mean to make you feel that way." He raised his hands up.

"I know you didn't. Most humans are eager to know about their past. I just thought you'd and offer you the courtesy. But seeing your room-" he trailed off, falling into her couch at the end of the bed. "You know how I told you the Tardis is a sentient being?"

Sorley nodded, wondering what her room had to do with anything. "She's not just any sentient being. She's an eleven dimension being that transcend time and space. That means she's here in the present, there in the future and back in the past. She generally gives special rooms to those who are special to the pilot. And this room… is nothing like any companion's room. Sorley who are you?"

He stared at her, one of his hands running through his hair. Something that she had come to realize was a nervous habit. She hesitated, her will melting under his liquid brown eyes.

"Doctor, I don't know who I will become." She sat beside him, her hand clutching her knee tightly. "But I suppose," she choked on her words. "I could let you unlock my memories."

"Sorley. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pressure you." He reached for her hand. Squeezing her hand, he said in a quiet voice, "You don't have to do it."

"So how does this memory thing work?" She faked a laugh.

"Well, I'll place my fingers on your temple and enter your mind. It might feel a bit strange at first. I'll then find the locked memories or missing memories. Sometimes it could be just misarranged and I'll just arrange it back."

She nodded. He cupped her chin, turning it to face him.

"Sorley. You don't have to do it if you don't want to."

"Doctor. Do it."

He lightly placed his fingers on her temple. He hovered at the edges of her mind, waiting for her get used to his sensation before delving further in. He felt her flinch and then apologize as one of the doors slammed in his face. He sent comforting thoughts as he resumed searching for the missing memories. The memories he walked past were recent ones and he walked passed without pausing. He did not need to search very long for he saw a large wall looming over the rest like a fence. To say it was interesting was an understatement. It was not just a simple wall or door, each seal interlocked each other the way a fabric is weaved. The Doctor had never seen such a structure. Where it began, where it end? He had completely and utterly no idea how to unravel such a structure. He trailed a mental finger down the structure tentatively. It was stronger than anything he had seen.

' _You have a wall. Well it's more like a fence. Can you try to imagine taking it down?'_

' _A what?'_

' _Wall.'_  He mentally tugged her to in front of the wall.  _'Try imagining it disappearing.'_

She nodded and squinted at it. Nothing happened. He frowned.

' _Or try imagining a door in front of it.'_

This time a white door appeared. At least her imagining skills were working. He looked satisfied.

' _Imagine the door opening.'_

Nothing happened again. The Doctor paced the door, staring at it, scrutinizing it. It seemed almost as though he believed the act of doing so would spring the door open. Eventually he broke from the mental connection. Leaning into the couch, he ran his hand through his hair, staring at Sorley with an unreadable look.

_What kind of memories does she have in order to have such a seal? I've lived so long and have never seen anything like it._

"Wow." He said after a long silence. "There's a seal on your memories. I've never even seen anything like it before. I'll need to read some stuff before I attempt opening it again."

He stood up, his mind full of theories and questions as he hurried out of the room. Sorley hugged her knees.

_Safe for the moment._


	4. The Hungry Rooms

It was time for her to make her move. She had been waiting ever since the Bad Wolf had left and she had been turned into the awful paradox machine. She had been waiting, waiting for the very moment to awaken. Her thief did not know and would not know the truth until much later. It would be a very long wait for the sister and the wife to arrive. A long wait for an outcome that even she could not see.

She hummed as he ran a hand over her console. The crack opened. The moment had come. She had almost destroyed herself getting into that universe. She knew she would be alright. Her thief would fix her. Her thief would always be there for her as she was always there for him.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Sorley woke up to a very insistent knocking on her door.

"Sorley? Are you up yet? If you aren't going to respond in 5 seconds, I'm going to break down this door."

She blinked. Suddenly there was a loud banging on her door. Sorley paled. Quickly gathering her wits, Sorley called out, "Yes I'm up. I'm up!" She clambered off her bed to open the door.

Donna was standing outside the door with a bemused look on her face. "That took you long enough."

"You weren't really going to break my door down right?"

"I don't lie," Donna said with a smirk.

"Good to know. Yes. Ok. I'm up…" Sorley watched Donna laugh, clutching her sides. "What's wrong?"

"I never thought you as one who would wear Donald Duck's pyjamas to sleep," She wiped the tears from her eyes. "I always thought you were someone more of... no pattern, plain and simple pyjamas. Donald Duck!"

Sorley arched a questioning eyebrow. Donna shrugged with a wry smile, "You know.. your clothes are always plain and simple. Black trousers or jeans with a coloured top. No frills, no lace, no designs on it. Just coloured. Always struck me as odd. Now I see you're actually pretty normal."

"Uhm... thanks?"

Donna ruffled Sorley's birdies hair. "Get changed. Spaceman found us a beach planet to land on. Says it got purple water and mermaids. I always wanted to see a mermaid."

She spun away and paused halfway down the hallway, "Wear a bikini! A polka dotted one!"

"Like hell I am," Sorley muttered before closing the door. She settled on a plain black tank top and short denim shorts instead.  _Wonder what a beach planet would be like._ The console room jerked as she wandered in. Well, jerking isn't that uncommon just that it felt less like a normal jerk. The Tardis jerked so much that she was even giving out names for the type of jerks: normal travelling jerk, landing jerk, storm jerk, good god learn to drive Spaceman jerk. All very aptly named by the lord and lady standing by the console. Well, not standing but clutching the railings. You could never really stand by a console when it was in flight.

"What was that?" Sorley heard Donna call out from her usual position at the railings.

"The Tardis found and homed on a distress signal."

"What?"

"Distress signal. We're responding to a distress signal." The Doctor dashed about the console in a weird manical dance. "Pull that lever, Donna."

"This?" She placed her hand on a red lever.

"Yep. Those blue buttons, Sorley!" He said as the Tardis jerked violently again. The trio held tightly on the railings as they were flung up and down.

"Turbulence."

"That's what you always say." Sorley heard Donna mutter. The Tardis landed with a thud and finally she pried her fingers from the railings. If she ever got back home, she could probably pass the NASA's test on finger grips. All this training would be put to good use.

"Where are we?" Sorley asked, edging towards the door.

The Doctor flung the door open. Sticking his finger out and then licking it, he replied, "Looks like a ship. Has to be a ship since we responded to a distress signal. Looks like a 80th century human ship. Air's breathable. No funny chemicals. A touch of Berlim radiation but nothing to worry about. Allons-y!"

He pulled Sorley out, scanning their surroundings with a sonic screwdriver. "Interesting…"

"What's interesting?"

"My screwdriver is picking up traces of…" he paused, lines furrowed deep into his forehead as he read the circles that spun out. He wrenched his head from the results. His eyes searching the surroundings. Sorley found herself needing to do a light job to keep up with him.

"Doctor? What did your screwdriver pick up?"

"Gallifreyan technology." He scanned each room they walked passed, searching fugitively for something.

"What are we looking for?" Donna asked. She was panting from running to catch up with them.

"Life. What else can we be looking for? Donna, there might be Gallifreyans here," his voice hitched as he answered.

"Gallifreyans?"

"Other Time Lords. Like me.'

"I thought you said you were the last one?"

"Well I thought I was." They walked into something that seemed to vaguely like the console room. "This is a Gallifreyan ship. Sixteen pilot ship."

The Doctor looked at it in awe. He ran his hand down the console. "It's not telepathic. That's odd." He scanned the room. "There's something wrong with the dimension circuits and the RDS. Why wasn't it fixed?"

He pulled open the console and begun wiring it.

"Doctor… weren't you saying about searching for life?"

He turned at Sorley, his hands paused in action. "Ah, right."

"He forgot," Donna smirked.

"I didn't forget, I just…"

He slunk over to one of the consoles. "Let's see what the logs are. The console is not in Gallifreyan. That's odd."

"Seven life forms found. There's five other people alive! They're just around the corner!"

He laughed, grabbing Donna and ran out of the room. Sorley had barely reacted when the duo left the console room and vanished from sight. They literally vanished from sight. One minute she saw their backs as they stepped out of the room and the next minute the hallway was empty.

"Donna? Doctor?" She looped back to grab the Doctor's coat. The hallway was empty. "Doctor? Donna? This isn't funny!" Sorley ran back to the console that the Doctor had been typing on. It was a map and it was empty save a single blue blinking dot.

"One life form found."

That was all it said on the monitor. Sorley felt a curl of panic growing in her stomach as she stared at the monitor in disbelief. She smacked the monitor a few times, hoping it was just a graphic glitch.

 _"_ They were just there!" She typed furiously, pulling out menus and logs hoping to find a clue to where the hell the Doctor and Donna was.

"Okay Sorley. Why not we head back to the Tardis first and see if the Tardis can home on their location. That would totally work right?" She muttered. Sorley twisted her loose hair around her finger. It was a great idea except that the console was in gallifreyan, the one language that the Tardis doesn't translate.

"Okay. Weirdddd! How the hell did I know that?" Sorley growled in frustration. She picked up the phone and pressed every single button on the same panel hoping to strike a lottery on it. The phone was dead. Not even a buzzing tone. "I'm bloody screwed."

"Okay! Map! There's me and…"

She spun around. "There's someone outside. Doctor, is that you?!"

Sorley ran over to the door. Wrenching the door open, she screamed in surprise and horror as a man fell onto her.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The hallway stretched out far in front of them. Coloured in an odd shade of lurid green, Donna wandered what on earth the people of the ship were thinking when they chose that colour for their walls. It had to be the worst kind of colour anyone in the right mind would pick. Steel grey columns were placed irregularly down the hallway. Donna didn't know anything about 21st century architecture but less 80th century architecture, but the column placement seemed rather haphazard. She wanted to stop to get a better look except the Doctor had stolen her right arm and was rather insistent on running down the hallway in a ground eating pace, buzzing that sonic of him left and right.

Donna recognized that look on his face. She had seen in when her neighbour's six year old son had disappeared for a whole day. Her neighbour, Mrs Lou had searched frantically, ringing every doorbell, poking into every tree, bush and drain. It screamed of desperation. Donna could only hope to understand and attempt to with sympathize. Here the Doctor had found a ship of his people and had life on it. He might not be the only one life. He would find people like him. He could find a home or make a home, settle down and stop travelling.

She frowned at that thought. It was highly unlikely that the Doctor would ever stop travelling. The Doctor living linearly in one spot. That idea itself sounded like it could explode worlds. Oh yes, Donna could almost sympathize with the Doctor if only he would stop pulling on her arm.

"Doctor! Slow down!" Donna called out. Her arm was starting to hurt.

"My arm Doctor," she groused half-heartedly.

He stopped suddenly causing Donna to smash into his shoulder. His hand reaching for a door. It was a door like all the other doors that they had ran passed, a hideous shade of purple that clashed terribly with the walls.

"What is it, Doctor? Is it here?" Donna asked, rubbing her nose with a grimace.

He made a motion to hush her, his sonic still held towards the door buzzing loudly. "They're in this room," he said.

"I gathered that," Donna mumbled. "Well, what are you waiting for Spaceman?"

A smirk, smug and triumph tugged at Donna's lips as she pushed him towards the door. "Open it!"

He glanced at her. Lines burrowing lightly into his forehead, Donna caught the shadow of fear before it hid under his cool, cheerful mask.

"You could always tell me if you didn't have the guts to open it," she said and stepped towards the door. "Not like you, Doctor."

He grinned. A fake smile. "Let's go!"

She raised an eyebrow at his words. He didn't usually say that but Donna knew better than to comment on that.

"That's weird." She heard the Doctor mutter as she stepped through the door into a large, bland room. It had the same lurid green walls and a nondescript couch in the middle of the room.

"This ship could seriously use some deco. Maybe a table here and some fancy lamps." She motioned vaguely. The only other thing worth of mention apart from the couch was the door on the other end. "Don't you agree, Sor-"

Donna pursed her lips, realizing that Sorley was missing. She had been so caught up in keeping up with the Doctor and then the Doctor's hesitance of opening the door that she had not notice Sorley was missing.

"Doctor, Sorley's missing." She pulled the door open again to see if Sorley was in the hallway. This time the door opened up to a blue and yet again bland room. "The hallway. It's gone."

"What? How's that possible?" He popped his head out. "I suppose the telepathic circuits might be broken if the ship can change the hallways then it should be semi-sentient. All Gallifreyan ships are at least semi-sentient."

He ran a hand down the walls. He couldn't feel the ship or even the presence of any Gallifreyans. Had he been jumping to conclusions? Was it possible that it was a technical error?

"We need to go back to the console room."

"What about Sorley?"

"Ah. Yes. Okay, first we get back to the console room, fix the telepathic circuits, then we'll use the ship to find her and retrieve her. She should be safe on the ship. The most she'll suffer is dehydration. The ship should be sentient enough to care for her passengers so she probably won't even suffer that. Allons-y!"

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Sorley shrieked, squirming underneath the mass of muscle that stung like weeks of unwashed laundry. She pushed and kicked. The man that pinned her to the ground lay still, unmoving like a rock. It was only the stuttering of uneven breaths that told her the man was still alive. Not for too long judging by the slow sticky liquid she was feeling on her legs. She had managed to catch a glimpse of burnt orange before the man had fallen on her. Not realizing fast enough that she would not have the mass or strength to support the man, Sorley had moved forward to catch him. Now they had landed on the ground, rather painfully for her. The man had his face on her chest, a position that was rapidly becoming extremely embarrassing.

"Please move!" she gasped. The man's weight felt like it was squeezing the air out of her lungs. Sorley kicked again, this time managing to free her left leg.

"Come on! Wake up!" She slapped the man's face a few more times. He had a layer of grime and sweat on his face. His matted blond hair was chopped off roughly, resembling a patchy old mop than a crop of hair.

Sorley pushed the man a few more times and slapped the man a few more times before he blinked. His mouth panted, gulping the air greedily. He blinked again, this time noticing Sorley. She froze under his intense look. Her mind running far ahead of her, desperately trying to make links.

"Sorley?"

Yes, she knew that he knew her. It was that look that he was still giving her.

"Yes? Do I know you? More importantly… CAN YOU PLEASE MOVE?" She grunted.

He looked down and realizing the way they were lying. He blushed. They struggled. Sorley jerking to the left while the man attempted to crawl to the left. They lay there, wheezing when the man finally managed to flip himself to the right of her.

"Woo air!" She spluttered. Sorley rolled her shoulders backwards, trying to ease the odd discomfort between her shoulders. She must have pulled it when the man fell on her, the man whose name she still did not know.

"So… who are you and how do you know me?" She asked as she wrapped a bandage of his side. Sorley had gone and retrieve the first aid box that the man had indicated where it was. His side was bleeding badly. Sorley truly doubted a bandage was ever going to stop it.

He shook his head. "Hello girlie. I'm Major Georgedeorandelando."

He stumbled to his feet, limping heavily to the console. Blood dribbled from his side. His left foot was bleeding as well.

"No. Sit. The Doctor will return soon. He'll fix you!"

He gave her a wry smile. "That's what you said earlier."

"What I-" He moved past her, his hand that had been tucked in his pocket the whole time pulled out a slim metal tube.

"Did you manage to get the Doctor yet?"

"Get? The comms is down. I tried every bloody button on the panel."

"Okay. You need to fix the comms. The modulated audio feeds have fallen in disrepair. You need to re-route the circuit from the sagittal electrodes to the coronal electrodes. The dimensional dams need to be disengaged first."

Major gave Sorley a soft look. "Look. It ain't your fault. If it's any comfort to you. I knew this would have happened."

He ruffled her hair with his large hands and sank onto a chair. "Remember girlie. Re-route the circuit from the sa-git-tal electrodes to the co-ro-nal electrodes."

Sorley twisted her hands, a tendril of panic settling into the bottom of her stomach. She had no idea what a sagittal electrode was or a coronal electrode was but it was obvious he had assumed she knew or something.

"What's a sa-git-tal electrode?"

"You figure it out. I'll disengage the dimension circuits first. The Doctor fixed the RDS and the dimension circuits."

He pointed the metal tube at the console. It whirled and a sea-green light lit up at the end of it.

"That's a sonic screwdriver!" She gaped at it. The Doctor had explained to her once that sonic technology was very advanced and very rare.

"It's not a sonic  _screwdriver._ " The man sighed. "It's a sonic  _probe._  When you see the Doctor, tell him to call it properly."

He was very pale now. Beads of sweat dribbled down his forehead, leaving trails down his grimy forehead.

"You need to sit. Teach me how to use this."

He smiled, placing her hand around it. "It has a telepathic circuit. You'll find it very useful."

Sorley nodded slowly at him. He grabbed her hand, pulling her into a hug. "Thank you." She heard him murmur softly into her hair.

"I didn't do anything." Sorley reached to return the hug. There was the sense of finality in his words.

"Major?" She lay him down gently. His half lidded grey eyes were still watching her.

"Don't leave the console room… Don't leave the console room, Auderloveniadea… You'll die." He closed his eyes. His breaths were shallower than it was, almost barely noticeable.

"Wait. I don't know how to fix the RDS or thingy. Don't go!" Sorley gripped the shirt tightly. His chest wasn't moving anymore.

"Come on…" she said. There wasn't a real point of forcing him to stay awake or alive. The Doctor wasn't going to return soon enough to save him. If she brought him to the Tardis, there might be something in the med bay to save him.

Sorley flung the door open. He had said not to leave the console room. She hadn't believed him. Sorley didn't want to believe that outside the console room was dangerous because that meant the Doctor and Donna were in danger. Were they suffering the same wounds like him? Where did he come from? He hadn't explained how he knew her.

Sorley thought of all these as she stood at the edge of the console room watching the hallway. Yes, there was something wrong with the hallway. There was a slight warping on the edge of her vision. The walls of the hallway were moving. It didn't move the way the Tardis did, it seemed to beckon her, comforting her. Yet the voice at the back of her head screamed to move back. It wasn't like that before. What had changed?

_The Doctor fixed the RDS and the dimension circuits._

Was that the answer? She spun back at the console. She choked on her breath as her eyes fell on the man. Sorley turned back out to the hallway. She couldn't even see the Tardis. Where was the Tardis? The voice in her head told her the first priority was to disengage the RDS and dimension circuits as the man told her. He hadn't explained that and she seriously doubted any amount of explaining would have done her good.

_You need to fix the comms._

"OK. Comms first. Maybe I'll be able to patch through to the Doctor and he'll teach me how to disengage the RDS and dimension circuits."

_This better work. Else judging by Major's body, we're all going to die._

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

There was something odd about the rooms in the ship. Almost sinister. The Doctor had sent out further telepathic probes for signs of any other telepaths for even a sense of the ship. The usual hum that all Time Lords would have felt in any Gallifreyan ship, Tardis or not was absent. That itself had made him worried. He had said that Sorley would be fine, he probably was further from the truth that he had anticipated. His screwdriver had picked up other indications that there was something seriously wrong with the ship. Back in the console room not only were the dimension circuits and RDS spoilt, the life support system seemed unstable. Both the dimension circuit and RDS had been sabotaged, the Doctor had an inkling that there was plenty more wrongs he would have picked up in the console room had he taken a better scan of it.

The monitor said that there were other people onboard, but after all the walking, he had not seen hide or hair of the people. The rooms they had entered were barren. Rooms were created by default with the basic furniture: table, chairs, a sofa, a bed. Another indication that the life support system was unstable. The lighting had been terrible in some rooms, if he had to guess, the visual stabilizer circuits were also faulty.

Closely behind him, Donna had fallen silent. She was smart and even without telling her, she had guessed something was terribly wrong. He buzzed at one of the keypads near the door. It was unlocked. All the doors, the rooms had been the same. They had gone room to room but never into the hallway. It almost felt like the ship was deliberately moving rooms so that they would not get into the hallway, but wouldn't the ship want them to get into the hallway. It didn't make sense. No, it made perfect sense if the ship was being invaded by an unknown origin. A bio virus or an aggressive parasite that may or may not have been telepathic. A bio virus would not be as fearful as a parasite. Well, that would depend what kind of bio virus.

"Doctor, is it just me or is the other side of the room darkening?" Donna asked, getting to her feet. Tired from all the walking, she had been leaning against the wall while waiting for the Doctor to finish fiddling with the keypad.

The Doctor turned to look at the other side of the room. "Donna." His voice was sharp with warning. Wasting no time, he wrenched the door open and pulled Donna to a standing position.

"Run!"

He slammed the door behind them, quickly sonicking lock. The Doctor had no illusions that it'd keep whatever that was in the room out.

"What was that?"

"It's a- parasite." He replied, hoping Donna would not notice the slight pause.

"Do we have a plan?"

"Yes! It's called running!" He flung open another door and sonicked it lock before running to the other door. The room was warping behind them. If he could find the power room #6, he might be able to fix it. What was causing this disturbance? What happened to the ship's sentient system? All the Doctor had were questions and not a single answer.

"Is that even a plan?"

"Right now it is!"

"Do you even know what it does?

"I have some ideas."

Donna huffed against a door. "Okay. Let's hear it," she panted.

"If the people on the ship are dead. Why are there no bodies?"

"You mean you have questions."

"I said I had ideas. Run." They scuttled into another room, making the gap between them and the warped side further.

"Donna. Is that your phone ringing?"

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

It was some brilliant stroke of luck that Sorley had managed to fix up the comms. To be honest, she had no idea how she had did it. She had basically pointed at the panel that the man had showed her and pointed thinking of Sagittal and coronal. She wasn't sure if she had gotten the part names right, but she had prayed rather desperately that she did.

The comms cackled as Sorley pushed the button on the panel. "Hello? Doctor? Is that you?"

"Doctor. If you can hear me please answer."

"Sorry girlie. This ain't your Doctor." A brusque male replied.

"Major George?! You're alive! How?" She eyed the body nervously. His body was still lying in the centre of the room. Same position too.

There was a silence on the other line. "Sorry girlie. This is the first time I'm speaking to you. It's not George. It's Georgedeorandelando. "

"What? I'm Sorley. You said you…" she eyed the body again. "Sorry. Wrong person I think. I'm looking for the Doctor. Is he with you?"

"No. How did you arrive here?"

"The Doctor received a distress signal and we landed here in his… ship." She wasn't sure if she should keep the Tardis a secret. Sorley couldn't remember offhand if the Doctor had even told strangers his ship's name. She did remember vaguely that he offered referred to her as 'his ship' rather than 'Tardis'.

"Took you guys long enough time to respond. Wait. Did you say the Doctor?"

"Yes…"

" _The_  Doctor. No last name?"

"Yes…"

"Dark brown leather jacket coat and beard?"

"Uhm… no. Brown trench coat but not leather."

There was a quiet conversation or muffled conversation before the man responded.

"Must have regenerated. Just hold on. I'm coming."

"No. Don't come. It's okay. The Doctor will fix you up. I mean it! It up! Fix it up!"

"Girlie. Sorley right? If it's the Doctor and he's not with you in the console room. You need to tell him that the rooms are alive. They will eat him up. Just keep running until I get there and fix the console. The blubbering idiot must have fixed the circuits."

"No! Seriously! Don't come!" Sorley yelled, but the man had already hung up. "Idiot's gonna die if he comes! He knew he'd die! Oh my god! I killed him!"

Sorley turned her face to her palms and scrubbed the tears away with fury. "Damnit. Later Sorley."

She pointed at the comms panel again. "Give me the Doctor damnit!"

"Is this that girl again?" another male voice asked. It wasn't the same brusque male that had answered earlier.

"You're not the Doctor!" she said, feeling an edge of hysterics.

"I'm afraid not. There's only three of us now. I assume Major Georgedeorandelando was unable to disengage the circuits."

"He died…" Tears poured down her face. "I killed him."

"No. He knew he would die. You were quite obvious." Sorley could imagine the wry smile on the other person's face. "We're trapped too. I'm afraid the ship is finally tired of the cat and mouse game. The circuits, you have to-"

"Have to what? Hello? Hello?" The line was cut off this time. Sorley bit her lip. "Third time has to be my lucky charm."

She sonicked the comms again, wiping her tears away. She could cry later on the Tardis. Right now, she had to save the Doctor. She had to get the bloody circuits fixed or spoilt however you wanted to see it.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

She fumbled in her pockets, pulling out a silver phone. "Unknown number."

He reached for the phone. "Hello?"

"Doctor. Listen carefully. The rooms are alive. They will eat you. You have to keep running. The man said I need to fix the console! I don't know how. He said you fixed the dimension circuits. You weren't supposed to. How to I disenable it?"

"Calm down. What man? Where are you?"

"A man! Major George something! He had an awfully long name. I'm still in the console room. He said the console room is safe."

"Can I speak to him?"

She sniffed. "He's dead. They're all dead."

The Doctor looked grim. "Right! The easiest way would be to smash the room into pieces. Oh. No. But that would mean the dimension dams and the life support system would be gone. Terrible idea. Please ignore that. It'll take too long to fix without a sonic screwdriver. Almost impossible. There are parts of a Gallifreyan ship that can only be fixed with a sonic."

"The man gave me his sonic. Well… something like that. Said it had a telepathic interface."

"Telepathic interface. That's brilliant! I've been meaning to do that."

"Doctor."

"Okay. The panel I was standing over. Do you know which one?"

"Yes. The man… he was trying to disengage it before he… yea."

"Okay. Point the sonic at the panel and think of breaking the gravity dampers."

There was a loud spark and a shriek. "I think I got it…"

"Okay then you have to invert the polarity in the plasma generator. You'll probably need to open the panel up. It should be a large black wire."

"They're all large black wires!"

"Just point at one of them! It should be the inner most. After that on the right side, there should be a cylinder. That's the-"

The Doctor ran into another man. The phone spun and clattered onto the floor. He turned trying to reach for it.

"Leave it! Run!" The man said and pulled into another door.

"There were three doors! All the rooms we had been in had only 2," Donna wheezed.

" _You must be the Doctor_." The man eyed the Doctor as the Doctor held his sonic towards the man.

" _Yes. Who are you?"_  The words in the Doctor's mouth felt funny. He hadn't spoken in his native tongue for centuries.

" _I'm Captain Justinaerolanu._ "

A Gallifreyan name. The Doctor hadn't heard a Gallifreyan name for a long time. " _What happened here? My Tardis received a distress signal but you're the first person we've seen."_

" _I'm afraid there were more of us. Most of us were eaten by the ship. Or the rooms if you wish to separate it. Major Richardluynarou likes to do that. I'm afraid it hasn't done him any good. He's dead now. I believe I'm the only left."_

Justinaerolanu pursed his lips. " _We were leaving for the Sky Trenches when our ship was attacked by a parasite. It would have been an easy removal except we were bombarded by Daleks at that point of time, by the time we could divert our attention to removing the parasite, the parasite had invaded the ship's telepathic circuit._ "

Sky Trenches. The Doctor looked at the tired looking man as they ran from yet another room. By the end of the war, even non Time Lords were sent to the sky trenches as support. It was a Gallifreyan name but the man was not a Time Lord.

" _The engineers were the first one to be eaten before we realized anything was wrong. Of course by the time we truly understood what had happened, we had been separated from the console room. Ten of us made the attempt back to the console room but only three of them made it. They disenabled the dimension circuits which prevented the parasite from creating more rooms and limited it to just moving rooms. We didn't manage to figure what kind of parasite it was but I believe it was a Nomimasha._ "

"Oh that can't be good," the Doctor muttered at the name.

"What's going? Can we like, stop running any time soon?" Donna interrupted.

Justinaerolanu looked at the ginger woman with disapproving eyes. " _You really do travel with humans. I always thought it was some exaggeration._ "

"Hey. I recognized that word 'Humans'."

"Nothing wrong with being Human," the Doctor replied, this time in English. "Okay. Nomimasha. They're a telepathic parasite. Likes their meals with a game of chase. Very aggressive race. Prefers telepathic species for food."

"Hello Nomimasha! Can you hear me?" The Doctor spun around to the darkened warped end of the room.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"Doctor? Doctor? Oh my god! Doctor! Please respond!" Sorley turned back to the half done panel. She had found the cylinder as the Doctor described but he had not said anything else.

"What do I do?" she spun the sonic in her hand. Her mind thinking of a gazillion things. The Tardis. The mathematician she was supposed to be. A brilliant think tank she apparently had been. Everything she had been and was not. She was just poor normal Sorley. The old her would have been able to fix this, probably. It was highly more probable than her present self. It was incredibly ridiculous but Sorley rather despised her old self.

Her head hurt just thinking of her old self. What good would it come out of it? She rubbed her nose bridge, hoping to relieve some of the pain.

"Yes. The cylinder."

Sorley squatted beside it. There was a sudden surge of knowledge in her mind. She did not know where it came from or how it came about, but she knew how to disengage the circuit and RDS now. She spun the sonic.

"Hold on Doctor!"

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

A grey figure pulled itself from the room. The Doctor bounced on the balls of heel, excited. Finally he was getting somewhere.

"You're the Nomimasha. Why are you doing this?"

"We will feast on the last of the Time Lords."

" _Last of the Time lords? There's plenty more of them and Gallifreyans out there in the sky trenches! You've been pursuing us for over 400 years! There's plenty of easier food out there._ "

"He didn't tell you that you both are the last of your kind?"

Justinaerolanu turned to the Doctor. " _What is he talking about?_ "

" _The war ended 400 years ago. I killed them all._ "

" _You what?"_  he grabbed and the Doctor up close with his lapels.

"Whoa there buddy!" Donna tried to push them apart, but he was holding too tightly. "Calm down!"

"Did he tell you?" He asked. Anger rolled off him in a palpable wave. His hands fisted onto the trench coat. Donna could see the white in his knuckles. "Did he tell you that he killed all of us?"

Donna snapped a look at the Doctor. He hung his head, not looking at anyone. In front of them the grey figure seemed to be laughing.

"I'm sure he had a good reason." Donna wasn't very sure to be frank, but the Doctor was a good man.

"Damn well better have one." He pushed the Doctor away and spat angrily at the ground.

"The Time Lords at the end of the war were going crazy. They were going to initiate the Final Sanction."

"What? That's… suicide!"

The Doctor nodded. Justinaerolanu stared at him before retreating, his brown eyes regarding the Doctor in a new and unsettling light.

"Well. That was not what I expected," the grey figure said. It stretched an odd grin over its blank face. "You were supposed to beat him up!"

Justinaerolanu glared at the figure. "If what he said was true, then I couldn't fault him."

"But he could have done so much more," it taunted. "So much more…"

He gave a painful grimace. "He was a good man based on his reputation even if the others had considered him odd. I'm sure he would have done it if it was possible."

"Well. That was boring. I guess we're done here. Supper's ready."

"Wait! Hold on!" The Doctor cried out, moving in front of both of them. "You didn't explain why you even bothered chasing them for 400 years! There are plenty of easier things to eat out there, why bother? That's not it isn't it?"

He grinned. "The ship's sentient circuit's last act must have been to trap you into the telepathic circuit. It's not that you want to stay, it's that you can't leave. So you waited for another telepathic ship to come so you could leave. But you're still stuck, aren't you? That's why you waited so long before you started chasing us."

"Oh how very smart of you. What are you going to do about it?"

"What if I offered to free you?"

"What are you doing?" Justinaerolanu hissed, pulling him aside.

The Doctor ignored him, pulling his arm free. "What do you say?"

"Very tempting. But no thank you. With this ship, I can lure more telepathic ships with telepathic species. I'll never need to find a new ship. Why would I want to leave?"

"So that's your real plan."

He pulled out a small mechanism. "Do you know what this is? It's a maser bomb. Oh yes. You know what it does."

"You fool. If you use that, you and your friend will be killed as well."

"Maybe, maybe not. I'm willing to take the risk. How far can you run?"

It hissed and pounced. Justinaerolanu grabbed the maser bomb from the Doctor's hand and pushed him into the other room.

"Go!"

"Justinaerolanu!" The Doctor struggled to pull the door open. Whatever the man had done, he had locked the duo out of the room.

"We have to run," Donna said gently. She grabbed his hand and pulled him to the opposite door. He nodded and followed. He faltered halfway down the hallway, feeling the faint maser bomb going off. The Doctor wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. He had doubted the circuits and the RDS would have been taken down and having those two up alone would have ensured that the Nomimasha would have been able to change its form, change the room or move the room away from the bomb. No doubt the other Gallifreyan was dead now. He clenched his fists, his nails making tiny crescent indents into his skin. The Nomimasha was probably still alive. If he could make it into the console room.

He looked up, surprised that they had managed to make it to the console room without any hindrance.

"Sorley, are you okay?" he asked as he burst into the console room. He spared no glance at the girl who sat beside the body. The Nomimasha would be on the move, he would need a plan to get them out alive. He whirred his sonic, scanning the panels to check if he could take the circuit and RDS down before the Nomimasha made it here.

"The circuit…" he looked at Sorley who clung onto Donna, hiding her face in Donna's shoulder. "You fixed the circuit and the RDS. How? I didn't manage to explain how to do it finish."

She looked up, rubbing her eyes furiously. Her eyes were red and swollen. "I don't know. I just knew."

"Blimey." He scratched his sideburns as he stared at her in wonder. He turned to the panel where he had seen the life forms on the ship.

"Three life forms found." Just the three of them. For a moment there, the Doctor was no longer the last Gallifreyan alive. He took shuddering breaths and turned to taking the telepathic circuit completely down. With this, he would be guaranteed that even if anyone was to board the ship, they would be safe and wouldn't be able to use it for anymore than scrap metal.

"Right. Let's go back."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The Doctor was sitting by the console when Donna came down.

"Are you okay?" Donna asked, handing him a mug of tea.

"I'm fine." He sipped the tea before placing it down on the small table. "Right. Where shall we go now? Ooo we could to Asgard or Felspoon."

He laughed and spun around the console. "What's your pick?"

Donna sighed. "You know you did promise us a beach. I wore a bikini on the ship. Did you know how embarrassing was that?"

"Oh. Well.. beach it is!"

"Yes. The one with the purple water and mermaids? But maybe after a rest. I am rather tired from all that running."

"Yes okay. I'll just park us in the vortex until we're ready to go."

Donna smiled and squeezed his shoulder before heading up the stairs. "It's okay to talk about it, you know?"

"Talk about what?"

She rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean. Good night, spaceman."

He stood there staring at his console. "He forgave me didn't he?" he whispered to no one.


	5. Silence in the Library

She had come. She had finally come. She could see the timelines shifting to accommodate her existence. One day in the far future, her Thief will realize her existence. The impossibility of her existence. He will be horrified. He will be intrigued and he would in time understand.

All the pieces in the right places.

They come riding abreast on the beast from haven, bearing the starlight in their wake. Each carrying a different burden, the past, the present, and the future. The sister, the wife, and the lonesome. The skies will rise, the songs will echo because of them.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

It was a city of books. Ever since her accident, Sorley loved books. The Doctor had brought them to a city of books.

"It's like a city!" Donna cried out in amazement.

"It's a world-literally a world. The whole core of the planet is the index computer-the biggest hard drive ever. And up here, every book ever written. Jeffrey Archer, Bridget Jones, Monty Python's Big Red Book. Brand new editions specially printed. We're near the equator, so..."

He licked his finger and held it in the air as though he was testing the wind. It was an act that Sorley found hilarious. Was he like a dog or something? Sorley couldn't figure if he really did it on purpose. In all honesty, he probably actually could smell or taste time. He was a Time Lord after all. While the Doctor had been all vague about what Time Lords could do, she had gotten the gist that he could sense time, like literally sense time. How cool was that?

Sorley turned to watch the Doctor who was now inspecting the information kiosk.

"No. Seriously, it was "We're going to the beach" then suddenly we're in the library. Why?" Donna asked irritably. "You think all the flying around and you could actually land us one time out of the last five times that we 'were going to the beach' at an actual beach. I'm not even asking for the beach with purple water and mermaids anymore. Even Florida would be perfectly fine."

Sorley giggled at Donna's frustration. First it had been the moon of Badabadaboo where they were supposed to go to the beach and landed up in the moon instead of the beautiful beaches of Badabadaboo. Then the museum (of death) something Donna had referred it as to the chagrin of the Doctor. Followed by the astray meteoroid, which actually wasn't too bad. It had been mildly life-threatening and the meteoroid, Minty, had been rather nice overall. But then, all the times, the Doctor had been supposed to bring them to the beach. Donna had even given up even wearing her bikini out now.

"But there's no one here. There's just books. I mean, it's not the books, is it? I mean, it can't be the books, can it? I mean, books can't be alive."

The Doctor took a step back, grabbing both hers and Donna's hand. They made their way back to the reception. The tingling feeling intensified on Sorley's neck.

"I am Courtesy Node 710/Aqua. Please enjoy The Library and respect the personal access codes of all you fellow readers regardless of species or hygiene taboo."

"That face, it looks real."

"Yeah. Don't worry about it." The Doctor waved her dismay away.

"A statue with a real face, though? It's a hologram or something, isn't it?" Donna frowned. Why wasn't the Doctor worried about it?

"No, but really, it's…fine." He sighed.

"Additional. There follows a brief message from the Head Librarian for urgent attention. It has been edited for tone and content by the Felman Lux Automated Decency Filter. Message follows. "Run. For God's sake, run. Nowhere is safe. The Library has sealed itself. We can't-Oh, they're here. Argh, slarg, snick." Message ends. Please switch off your mobile comm. units for the comfort of other readers."

He ran his hand through his hair. "So, that's why we're here? Any other messages, same date stamp?"

"One additional message. This message carries a Felman Lux Coherency Warning of 5-0-11."

"Message follows. "Count the shadows. For God's sake, remember-if you want to live, count the shadows." Message ends."

He spun around, staring at the empty room.

"Donna, Sorley… Stay out of the shadows." He said. Pulling Sorley close, he made his way to another door.

"What's in the shadows?" Sorley asked, feeling somewhat scared by the way the Doctor was acting.

"We weren't just in the neighbourhood, were we?" Donna raised an eyebrow at the Doctor.

Sorley rolled her eyes, waving the hand that the Doctor was so adamantly holding onto. "We're never ' _just in the neighbourhood'_  Donna. Even I know better than that."

"What's that supposed to mean!" He sulked, releasing the hand.

"So I got a message on the psychic paper. That's all." He held it up for them to see. "Can't actually pretend I didn't see it right?"

"Cry for help.. with a kiss. That's so you." Donna smirked.

Suddenly the lights began to turn off. The Doctor grabbed Sorley's hand again, "Run!" They slid to a stop in front of a door.

"What, is it locked?"

"Jammed! The wood's warped!"

"Sonic it, use the thingy!" Donna waved frantically, turning around to see the darkness approaching.

"I can't! It's wood!"

"You mean it can't do wood?" Sorley said incredulously. "That's got to be the dumbest thing ever! How can it not do wood?"

"It just doesn't! Hang on! If I vibrate the molecules, fry the bindings-"

"Oh just get out of the way!" Donna shoved the both of them apart. Swinging her foot at the door, she rams it open and runs through.

Sorley handed the Doctor a book who quickly fitted it through the handles. It probably wouldn't do much to stop the darkness from entering, but hey! Anything could be possible. She gazed around the room. The rows and rows of books all waiting to be read.

"Stay out of the shadow, Sorley." The Doctor said, watching her from the corner of his eye.

"All these books. When we get out of here, can we come back to a time where we actually can read them?" she asked. She turned to the Doctor who was staring at the ceiling.

"What's happening?" Sorley looked up as well.

"There's a shadow," Donna said. She looked around anxiously.

"And nothing to cast it." The Doctor said. "Oh! I'm thick! Look at me! I'm old and thick! Head's too full of stuff, I need a bigger head!"

He smacked his head. "It's so obvious! It's not dark."

They moved closer the Doctor, both reaching for his arm. "That shadow – it's gone," Sorley whispered.

"We need to get back to the Tardis. That shadow isn't gone. It's moved."

"How can a shadow move?" Sorley asked, her question was lost in the loud blast and sudden bright lights. Six figures in spacesuits entered through the door, one of them stopping in front of the trio.

"Hello, sweetie," River said with a wide grin. Her happy look turned cold as her glance fell on Sorley. She frowned before glancing back at the Doctor.

"Get out." Doctor said, pointing at the breached door. "All of you, turn around, get back in your rocket and fly away! Tell your grandchildren you came to The Library and lived. They won't believe you."

River sighed and frowned again at Sorley. "Pop your helmets everyone. We got breathers." She removed her helmet and leaned towards Sorley. "What are you doing here? You promised you won't interfere."

Sorley took a step back, uncertain of the strange seemingly hostile woman. "I'm sorry. Do I know you?"

River rolled her eyes. "Are we playing this again? Really? I'm almost surprised the Doctor hasn't said anything yet. Oh wait, he can't can he? He's just stuck. With. You. And you love that." She said quietly into Sorley's ear.

River turned to look at the Doctor who was angrily talking to Lux and Evangelista. "Leave before I get angry. Don't want to see me angry," she said before moving towards the Doctor.

"You think there's danger here?" River asked.

"Something came to this library and killed everything in it. Killed a whole world. Danger? Could be."

"That was 100 years ago. The Library's been silent for 100 years. Whatever came here is long dead," she argued.

"Bet your life?"

"Always," she smiled. Behind the sound of the door sealing by Other Dave filled the air.

"You're taking orders from him?" Lux demanded, turning back to glare at the Doctor.

"Spooky isn't it?" The Doctor started. He shone the torch into the shadows, peering carefully into it. "Almost every species in the universe has an irrational fear of the dark. But they're wrong, 'cause it's not irrational. It's the Vashta Nerada."

"What's Vashta Nerada?" Donna asked.

"It's what in the dark. It's what's always in the dark. Lights! That's what we need, lights!" He chucked the torch to Lux. "Ya got lights? Form a circle, a safe area, as big as you can. Lights all pointing out."

River smiled at him before turning to Anita. "Do as he says."

"You're not listening to this man are you?" Lux frowned at River.

"Apparently, I am. Anita, unpack the lights. Other Dave, make sure the door is secure then help Anita. Mr Lux, put your helmet back on, block the visor. Proper Dave, find an archive terminal. I want you to access The Library database, see what you can find about what happened 100 years ago. Pretty Boy, you're with me. Step into my office." She nodded at a desk with a terminal, before glancing at Sorley who still there in the middle with Donna.

"Professor Song, why am I the only one wearing the helmet?"

"Because I don't fancy you," she replied smiling.

"Pretty Boy, with me I said!" River called out.

"Oh, I'm Pretty Boy?" The Doctor said incredulously, pointing to himself.

"Yes, that came out a bit quick." Donna rolled her eyes.

"Pretty?" Doctor raised an eyebrow at Sorley. Sorley chuckled and Donna went meh.

They watched the Doctor walk to River in silence. It was only after the both of them were deep in conversation that Donna finally broke the silence that fell between them. "What did she say to you?"

"Who?"

"Don't play dumb with me. That woman," she nodded at the frizzy haired woman. "I saw you look scared when she spoke to you. What did she say to you?"

"Nothing." Sorley clasped her hands behind her back, twirling her thumbs together. She hadn't really understood what River had meant.

"Really? Nothing?" Clearly Donna didn't believe her and she could hardly be faulted for not believing Sorley. Sorley was chatty enough but she had a tendency of not talking about the things that really mattered. It had taken awhile for Donna to realize it. Even what happened on the ship, Sorley had spoken very little about it. Donna slung her arm over the girl's slight shoulders and get her a squeeze.

"Don't worry, I won't let any big haired woman bully you." She smiled. Sorley leaned slightly into the ginger-haired woman's touch, grateful for the support and for not trying to force her to talk about it.

Meanwhile the Doctor had joined River at the desk.

"Thanks," River nodded at him as she unpacked the stuff.

"For what?"

"The usual. For coming when I call."

"That was you?"

"You're doing a very good job, acting like you don't know me. I'm assuming there's a reason." She rolled her eyes before taking a small diary out.

"A fairly good one actually," the Doctor started.

"I suppose it'd have to do with Sorley again?" River said with an all-knowing smile. "Okay. Shall we do diaries then? Where are we this time? Going by your face, I'd say it's early days for you, yea?"

"What does anything have to do with Sorley?"

"Everything is always about Sorley." She pursed her lips and thumbed through the diary. "Have we done crash of Byzantium? No? What about picnic at Asgard? No? Blimey, life with a time traveler. Never knew it could be such hard work. Oh. You're young."

"I'm really not young." He raised his eyebrows, dodging her hand as she tried to put on his face. "You didn't really explain the thing about Sorley."

"Your eyes are younger than I've ever seen you." She glanced at Sorley with a small smile. "She must be young too then. Doctor, please tell me you know who I am."

"Who are you?"

_BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP_

"Sorry, that was me. Trying to get through into the security protocols. I seem to have set something off. What is that? Is that an alarm?" Proper Dave said.

"Doctor, that sounds like –"

"It is. It's a phone."

"I'm trying to call up the data core, but it's not responding. Just that noise." Proper Dave told the Doctor.

"But it's a phone!"

"Let me try something." The Doctor said. He typed furiously on the keyboard. "Ok, doesn't like that. Let's something else."

"Oh! Okay here it comes. Hello?" He peered towards the screen. A young girl sitting on near a couch appeared on the screen.

"Hello? Are you in my television?"

"Well, no. I'm… I'm… sort of in space. I was trying to call up the data core triple-grid security processor."

"Would you like to speak to my dad?"

"Dad or your mum. That'd be lovely," the Doctor replied.

"Wait," she hesitated. "I know you. You were in my library."

"Your library?" The doctor repeated.

"The Library has never been on television before. What have you done?" she asked, sounding upset.

"Well…" The Doctor looked down at the keyboard "I just… rerouted the interface-" The connection fizzled out before he could finish.

"What happened? Who was that?" River asked. The Doctor typed on the keyboard, frustrated at being unable to get a respond, he ran to the other side of the room to another terminal.

"I need another terminal. Keep working on those lights, we need those lights!" he yelled as he dashed to the other terminal. He jumped over the counter, typing commands into the keyboard. The diary that the woman had been holding was sitting right beside the terminal. Unable to resist, he reached for it. River plucked it out of his hands before he could open it.

"Sorry. You're not allowed to see inside the book. It's against the rules," she said.

"What rules?"

"Your rules." She turned to continue working before he could say anything.

All of a sudden the books started flying. "What's that? I didn't do that. Did you do that?" The Doctor said. They shook their head.

"Not me," Proper Dave replied.

The Doctor turned back to the terminal. The screen now displaying 'CAL ACCESS DENIED'. Sorley dodged a few books before getting smacked in the face with one. Donna managed to dodge all of them which surprised her. She let out a small laugh.

"You okay?" Donna asked, giving Sorley a once-over. Apart from Sorley nursing her nose, she seemed fine. Donna turned to the scared Evangline, the mother hen in her growing. River caught Sorley's eye and motioned Sorley to follow her to a corner. Though unwilling, Sorley stepped away from Donna who was talking to Evangeline.

River stared at her. Her grey eyes were hard and cold. "What are you still doing here?" River said. "I thought I told you to leave."

"I can't exactly leave…" Sorley motioned.

"You know exactly what I mean. The next time I turn around, you better be gone."

"How does the data core work? What's the principle? What's CAL?" The Doctor asked, sitting on the desk.

"Ask Mr Lux," River replied.

"I'm sorry, you didn't sign your personal experience contracts."

Frustrated, the Doctor jumped down the desk. He glared at the man. "Mr Lux, right now, you're in more danger than you've ever been in your whole life. And you're protecting a patent?"

"I'm protecting my family's pride."

"Well, funny thing, Mr Lux I don't want to see everyone in this room dead because some idiot thinks his pride is more important."

"Then why don't you sign his contract?" River asked. "I didn't either. I'm getting worse than you."

"Okay okay okay." The Doctor moved away. His hands waving as he spoke. "Let's start at the beginning. What happened here? On the actually day, a hundred years ago, what physically happened?"

"There was a message from the Library. Just one. ' _The lights are going out'_. Then the computer sealed the planet, and there was nothing for 100 years." River replied.

"It took three generations of my family to just decode the seals and get back here." Lux said stiffly.

"There was one other thing in the last message." River started.

"That's confidential." Lux hastily interrupted.

"I trust this man with my life," River shot him a look. "With everything."

"You've only just met him!"

"Nope. He's only just met me." She pulled out the data file. "This is a data extract that came with the message."

"4022 saved. No survivors," The Doctor read.

"4022. That's the exact number of people who were in the library when the planet was sealed."

"But how can 4022 people be saved if there were no survivors?" Sorley asked. Her head was reviewing the sentence. There was something odd with the wording, but what was odd about it? She couldn't put her finger on it.

"That's what we're here to find out."

"And so far, what we haven't found are any bodies," Mr Lux stoically added.

Suddenly there was a scream. Before anyone could react, the Doctor had grabbed Sorley's hand and the torch and pulled her along until they arrived in a lecture room. There was only a skeleton there.

"Everybody, careful! Stay in the light." He yelled. River flickered a look at Sorley who stood slightly away from the Doctor. She stared at the skeleton, her knees feeling weak.

"You keep saying that. I don't see the point," Proper Dave said.

"Who screamed?"

"Miss Evangelista."

"Where is she?" the Doctor asked.

Sorley watched Donna gape at the skeleton.

"What's a data ghost?" Donna asked.

"There's a neural relay in the communicator, lets you send thought mails. That's it there, those green lights. Sometimes it can hold an impression of a living consciousness for a short time after death. Like an afterimage." The Doctor explained.

"My grandfather lasted a day. Kept talking about his shoelaces."

Sorley reached for Donna's hand. "Help her."

"She's dead…" Donna squeezed her hand as she replied Evangelista's question.

"Anyone mind if I…?" River asked, without waiting for anyone to reply, she stepped towards the skeleton and turned the relay off.

"That was horrible… The most horribly thing I've ever seen." Donna said, a tear slipping down her face. Sorley hugged her tightly, rubbing her hand up and down Donna's back.

"No. It's just a freak of technology. But whatever did this to her, whatever killed her… I'd like a word with that." River said.

"I'll introduce you." He hurried back to the other room. "I'm going to need a packed lunch."

"Hang on." River crouched down to her bag, pulling out the diary first before a tin lunch pack.

"What's in that book?" The Doctor asked. He crouched beside here, scrutinizing her.

"Spoilers."

"Who are you?"

"Professor River Song, Uni-"

"To me. Who are you to me?"

"Again. Spoilers." She sighed. "Chicken and a bit of salad. Knock yourself out."

Taking the tin, he stood in the room with a grim look. "Right, you lot. Let's all meet the Vashta Nerada." He took his screwdriver out and started scanning under the desk.

"You're still here. Still haven't decided to return yet?" River said to Sorley snidely.

"I really don't know what you're talking about."

River stared at Sorley's eyes. "Oh, this is gold. You don't know me yet. I didn't even think that was possible. Hah! Something you don't know. You don't know what you are yet, do you? Neither does he." She turned to look at the Doctor with a smug smile.

"Hey lady," Donna stepped between them, pushing Sorley behind her. "Are you bullying her?"

"Hello." River smiled widely at Donna. "You travel with them too, don't you? Poor thing."

"Poor thing? How can travelling with them be described as that? Do you even know him?"

River merely smiled. "We go way back, that man and me... just not this far back. It's strange. Never expected her to not know me either."

"Her? What has Sorley got to do with anything?"

"Well he hasn't met me yet. I sent him a message but it went wrong. It arrived too early. This is the Doctor in the days before he knew me. And he looks at me… he looks right through me, and it shouldn't kill me, but it does." River continued as though she had not heard Donna's question.

However Donna did not let her side-stepping deter her and pressed on, "that doesn't explain about what Sorley has to do with anything. He just sort of kidnapped her accidentally. I don't see how you should have known her."

"Maybe not. But she should know me. She always does. It's so…" River pursed her lips. She sniffed at Sorley. "Aggravating. She should learn to leave when she's asked to. Or take hints. But I suppose you don't know what she is yet."

Sorley backed away from River. "What on earth are you talking about? Are you talking rubbish?" Donna yelled, exasperated. That woman seemed to hold a large grudge over Sorley who had never met her. Sniping away hurtful remarks that didn't make sense.

"Donna! Quiet, I'm working." The Doctor chided from his spot on the floor.

"Sorry."

"Donna? You're Donna? Donna Noble?" River asked with a surprised look.

"Yeah. Why?" She replied and folded her arms. If this woman made another snide remark, Donna swore she'd smack her upside down.

"I do know the Doctor, but in the future. His personal future."

"And you don't know me? Where am I in the future?"

"Okay, got a live one. That's not darkness down those tunnels. This is not a shadow. It's a swarm. A man eating swarm." The Doctor called out as he got off the floor. They gathered, staring attentively at the shadow that he was pointing at. The Doctor tossed a piece of chicken into the shadow. All that was left was the bone before it had even hit the ground.

"Piranhas of the air. The Vashta Nerada. Literally  _'the shadows that melt the flesh'._  Most planets have them, but usually in small clusters. I've never seen an infestation on this scale, or this aggressive," The Doctor explained.

"What do you mean most planets? Surely not Earth," Donna asked.

"Oh yea. Earth and a billion other worlds. Where there's meat, there's Vashta Nerada. You can see them sometimes if you look. The dust in the sunbeams."

"But if they were on Earth, we'd know," Donna countered.

"Nah. Normally they live on road kill. But sometimes people go missing. Not everyone comes back out of the dark."

The group glanced at each other, scanning the shadows that surrounded them. "Every shadow?" River asked with a tremor in her voice.

"No, but any shadow."

"So what do we do?" She looked at the Doctor then Sorley who stood there stiffly.

"Daleks, aim for the eyestalk. Sontarans, back of the neck. Vashta Nerada…" he gazed at their frightened faces. "Run. Just run."

"Run? Run where?" River said, almost hysterical.

"This is an index point. There has to be an exit teleport somewhere." He said.

"Don't look at me. I haven't memorized the schematics."

The Doctor looked around, searching the terminals for a way out.

"Sorley, teleport us out." River hissed at her, grabbing her arm.

"How on earth do you expect Sorley to teleport us out?" Donna replied sharply. "Doctor. The little shop. They always make you go through the little shop on the way out so they can sell you stuff."

He ran to the door and peered inside. "Brilliant! That's why I like the little shop."

"Okay. Let's move it." Proper Dave said, heading towards the door.

"Actually Proper Dave, could you stay where you are for a moment?" The Doctor said.

"Why?"

"I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry." The Doctor replied. "But you got two shadows."

They shifted away from Proper Dave. "That's how they hunt, they latch onto a food source and keep it fresh."

"What do I do?" he asked, even with his body completely still, his face had turned ashen as his eyes darted about the floor.

"You stay absolutely still. Like there's a wasp in the room. Like there's a million wasps."

"We're not leaving you Dave," River comforted.

"'Course we're not leaving you. Where's your helmet? Don't point. Just tell me."

"On the floor. By my bag," he replied as Anita goes over to get it for him.

"Don't cross his shadow," warned the Doctor. Anita inched gingerly around his shadow before passing it to him.

"Thanks. Now, the rest of you, helmets back on and sealed. We'll need everything we've got."

This time without any griping, they instantly started doing as the Doctor had instructed. The Doctor slowly lowered Proper Dave's helmet onto him.

"Doctor, neither of us have helmets." Donna gripped Sorley's hand. Were they going to die? Sorley felt her hand go numb in Donna's grip.

"Yeah. But we're safe anyway."

"How are we safe?" Sorley asked with a quizzical eyebrow. How could they with helmets and spacesuits be as safe as them?

"We're not. That was a clever lie to shut both of you up," The Doctor said and turned to River. There was an odd smirk on River's face. She was looking at Sorley. The Doctor glanced back at Sorley who seemed discomfited by River. Had some conversation gone on without him realizing it? Granted he did have a thousand and one things to worry about. He rubbed his sideburns. Women. "Professor, anything I can do with the suit?" he asked River.

"What good are the damn suits? Miss Evangelista was wearing her suit. There was nothing left." Lux yelled.

"We can increase the mesh density. Dial it up to four hundred percent. Make it a tougher meal." River told him.

"Okay." He nodded and sonicked Dave's suit. "Eight hundred percent. Pass it on" He said as he handed over his screwdriver. He paused at the sight of the thing that River held in her hand.

"Gotcha." She said with an odd smile.

"What's that?" He asked with a frown.

"It's a screwdriver."

"It's sonic."

"Yeah I know. Snap!" she shrugged.

Grabbing Donna and Sorley's hand, he pulled them into the shop and placed them onto the teleport. "Stand there on the circles. It's a teleport. Stay there. I can't send the others, the Tardis won't recognize them."

"What are you doing?" Donna asked.

"You don't have a suit. You're not safe!"

"You don't have a suit, so you're in as much danger as we are. We're not leaving you!" Sorley cried out.

"Let me explain-" The Doctor started. But before he said anything, he slammed a button down. The Library faded and the Tardis appeared around them. Sorley heard Donna cried out before her teleportation could complete and Sorley for some inexplicable reason found herself back alone in the now empty little shop in the Library.

"Donna? Doctor?" Sorley called out. She wandered back into the room that they had been in. It was empty now. There was a strange square 'door' in the middle of the bookcases. She followed it in. It was empty. Not even a sound.

"Doctor?" She called out again. This time she raised her voice a little louder. Had she been too quiet the previous time? Had they left her behind? It didn't make sense that they did.

_You don't know what you are yet, do you?_

Why did River seem to dislike her so blatantly? Had she done something wrong? Sorley shook her head, focusing her task on finding someone. She ran through the rows of bookshelves, following the chaos that had been left behind. Was she that far back? Had she been delayed? Had they forgotten her? She spun around. The rows and rows of books seemed to press her down into the ground. The strange tingle in the back of her mind and then all was black.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

He woke up to the sight of River sitting in a chair fiddling with the wires. "Oh, no, no, no, no. Come on. What are you doing? That's my job!" The Doctor yelled, tugging at the handcuffs hard.

"Oh, and I'm not allowed to help you?" She said.

"Why am I handcuff- Why do you even have handcuffs?"

"Spoilers," she replied with a sad smile.

"This is not a joke. Stop this now. This is gonna kill you! I'll have a chance, you don't have any!"

"You wouldn't have a chance and neither do I! I'm timing it for the end of the countdown. There'll be a blip in the command flow. That way it should improve our chances of a clean download." She looked sadly at him.

"River. Please. No!"

"Funny thing is, this means you two always knew I was going to die this way. That was why that last time I saw you. The real you, the future you, you showed up, she knew. You complained she forced you to come. Then she disappeared to give us time. You didn't like it but she didn't give you a choice. She always knew. The Singing Towers of Darillium. They sang and she cried. I never would have guessed." A tear ran down her cheek.

"You wouldn't tell me why. But I suppose you knew it was time – my time, time to come to The Library. That's why she forced you to give me your spare sonic screwdriver. It should have been a clue... I always thought she was being daft."

Both sonic screwdrivers were together with the diary, out of reach. The Doctor looked up at her.

"There's nothing you can do."

"You can let me do it!" He tugged at the handcuffs again.

"If you die here, it'll mean I've never met you." She wiped the tear away.

"Time can be rewritten!"

She shook her head. "Not those times. Don't you dare. It's okay. It's not over for you. You'll see me again. You've got all of that to come. You, me and her. Time and space. Now it seems all so meaningless."

"River, Who is she you keep referring to? How do you know my name." He said as the time started counting down from ten. "There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name."

"It wasn't you." She said.

"Tell her I'm so sorry." She said before plugging the two large cables together as the time reached zero. A blinding flash of light and she was gone. He stayed there, staring at the vacant seat. The mystery that he would have figure out.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

He stood there, waiting for Donna and Sorley.

"Doctor. Sorley, she's not here." She frowned. "Could she…" They turned to look at the Tardis. Peering into the Tardis, they saw the slight figure lying on the grating.

"How come she made it and you didn't?" He stared at his screwdriver with a frown. "How come I didn't get a teleport breach signal?"

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 **A/N:**  So I know there is a lot of River x 11 fans and a lot of people who like River. This chapter might make or break the people who like the way I portrayed her. I'm not going to apologize for those who hate the way I made her. I actually do like River quite a bit, but I felt she was a bit 2D and rather unrealistic overall. If I wrote any of my OC the way River is, she'd be called Mary Sue. So I gave her a bit more edge and hopefully a bit more realism to her character. The plot of this story is fairly close to the canon plot. Minor adjustments here and there, key points will be kept the same. The wedding and all the works. I will do the same for a few other canon characters, perk them up, give them so shadings.

I hope you'll stay with me for the journey for this plot. Oh yes, there is a plot. If you've picked it up already and started trying to figure who Sorley is, here's a big hint, she's not a minor character. If you haven't started to figure it out yet, no worries, a lot of things will make sense by the... 13 chapter (unless there is some short chapters or unforeseen circumstances that require me to break my chapters into 2). I'm extremely excited for chapter 10. I keep talking about it and weeding out all the problems with it. Don't worry if things seem sort of 'vague', they are supposed to be sort of 'vague'...

Please do let me know if you loved it or hated this chapter and why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: Non-canon chapter - Through the Looking Glass


	6. Through the Looking Glass

In a manner that was slow yet paradoxically sudden, Sorley woke, creating a sense of disorientation that was only enhanced by the deep darkness that surrounded her. She didn't know how long she was out or why she was out. There was no light in her room. There was no hum of the ship that she had became familiar with, no voices. It was just the darkness. She got off the bed, feeling the soft carpeted floor beneath her bare feet. Her shoes were off and she was wearing clothing that felt unfamiliar to her, a woollen dress perhaps. She moved her hands down her clothes, trying to figure what she was wearing. Her last memory was the rows of the bookshelves then the darkness. Then, she had been wearing a plain denim skirt with leggings and shoes. Yet now she was wearing a loose fitting woollen dress. She held her arms out, trying to feel her way around. It was empty. Had she been on a bed in the middle of a large empty dark room? Sorley could not imagine why anyone would do such a thing or have such a room to begin with.

There was no sound.

She hadn't realized it. There was the strange absence of sound.

"Doctor?" Sorley called out tentatively into the enveloping darkness. Not even an echo.

_Who are you?_

The question appeared in her mind. She staggered back, grasping her head with a loud gasp.

"I am… Sorley… Sorley Morin," she replied to the emptiness and feeling rather silly.

_Sorley Morin, Identification Number 5733-40-13 15 18 9 14-9-200, Code Name S. Beta. Age 840. Please confirm or deny._

The voice appeared in her mind. She spun around flustered. "Show yourself! Who are you? Where am I?"

A child with shoulder length ginger hair and chubby cheeks materialized in front of her.

"Who are you? Where am I?" Sorley emboldened by the response of her questions asked. She stood in front of the girl who stared back at her unperturbed by Sorley's outburst.

_Insufficient permissions. Please confirm or deny. Disconnection in 5 microspans._

"What? What is microspans?"

_1 microspan equates to 1000 nanospans. Please confirm or deny. Disconnection in 5 microspans._

Sorley stared at the girl who merely stared back at her. A strange thought of whether she might be truly real flickered through her mind. She was stuck here in the strange darkness and for some perculiar reason she could see the girl but not her own hand in front of her face.

_Sorley Morin, Identification Number 5733-40-13 15 18 9 14-9-200, Code Name S. Beta. Age 840. Please confirm or deny. Disconnection in 2 microspans._

"Confirm," Sorley replied at length. What could happen if she confirmed even if she wasn't the real owner of it. All the strange numbers and the code name, hell she wasn't even that old to begin with. It could never possibly or even logically belong to her. Sorley pursed her lips, watching the girl expectantly.

The girl blinked really slowly while staring at her.

_Please input password and passcode._

She should have seen this coming. Sorley paced the strange darkness. She heard of how sometimes your subconscious has all the answers and it works when you say the first thing that pops into your mind. Unfortunately she only had an odd song in her mind. With nothing to lose, she sang the chorus.

"Danger will follow me, everywhere I go. Angels will call on me and take me to my home. This tired mind just wants to be led home."

Sorley cringed. She didn't have the best voice and she couldn't even remember how the rest of the song went. She remembered this song because of a drama she had watched while in the hospital. Something about Dolls and it stuck with her.

_Password and passcode accepted. Level 1 access granted._

The darkness cleared and Sorley found herself in a room reminiscent of the one in her world. There were pictures of her and Thomas, and a dog which she could barely remember on the window sill. Her hand stopped at the picture of her and Thomas. Picking it up, she scrutinized it. Her hazy fuzzy memory making its most recent appearance yet again failed to bring up relevant information. They were standing beside another man with a bow tie. Thomas was beaming ear to ear while she had a playful smirk. She didn't remember it. Who was the man in the bow tie? What were they doing? She must have said it out loud because the voice in her mind replied.

_He is Matt Smith. Thomas Morin and Sorley Morin had managed to catch them filming Doctor Who in a field nearby. Thomas Morin shook Matt Smith's hand and swore to not wash it for the rest of the week. Matt Smith found it interesting that it was the Brother and not the Sister that was interested._

_It was cold._

_Goodbye Rory._

"Good bye Rory? Who's Rory?" Oddly, an image conjured in her mind when she said it. It was not the voice in her mind, it was a memory. A forgotten memory. Green eyes with almost floppy brown hair.

Sorley blinked and the image was gone, and so was the room. She was standing in the console room. She had immediately assumed it was a console room by the time rotor, it wasn't her Doctor's console room. It was different. Orange lights, glass floor. She looked around before realizing the trio staring at her. It was  _Matt Smith_ , a ginger haired girl and a blond haired man that stared back at her with varying expressions.

"Who are you?"  _Matt Smith_  asked. "How did you enter?"

"Doctor. Do you remember her?" The ginger haired girl asked before turning to the blond haired man. The blond haired man shook his head, his lips curled in a confused manner. It was as though he wasn't sure if he should laugh or be angry.

"Amy. A strange girl appears in the middle of the console room and you ask me if I remember her?" He turned to look at the ginger haired girl that Sorley realized was named Amy. "Do you know her?"

Amy glanced briefly at the blond haired man and he shook his head almost unnoticeably.

"Am I supposed to know her?" he asked, this time to the blond man who was walking towards Sorley.

The man shrugged with a dry smile and turned to Sorley. There was a melange of emotions swirling in his brown eyes though his face was schooled as he gazed upon her. Behind him was a fierce conversation was taking place.  _Matt Smith_  would raise his hand and point something at her while Amy would push it away, muttering furiously to him.

"Ignore them." The blond man started. He tucked his thumbs at the pockets, his body heaving in an audible sigh. "She's upset. We're all upset. Never got around to knowing you, you know. I know it's not really you. Just the Tardis comforting us I suppose."

He nocked at eyebrow at the time rotor with disbelief. "We'll be okay. You can go now."

"How do I go? Leave I mean," Sorley asked.

The blond man took a startled step back. "I didn't…" Snapping out his screwdriver, he scanned her.

"That's most interesting…" he said, looking at the results with a contemplative look.

"Amy. Stop interrupting me-"  _Matt Smith_  pushed past her and stalked towards them. "Tell me what you got," he demanded in a low growl.

"Look." The blond man pushed him backwards. He was shorter than  _Matt Smith_  but it didn't deter him from stepping up toe to toe to the angry Time Lord. "Calm down. I can assure you that all she needs to do is to say  _Exit Program. Return._ "

 _Matt Smith_  looked at the blond man then back at Sorley confused. "What?"

"It's just… It's difficult to explain." The blond man said, catching Sorley's eye, he blinked at her.

It was almost as though he was begging her to do something, say something. Then she realized, all she had to do was to say, "Exit Program. Return."

The console room faded and then it was all black again. This time when she blinked, she found herself back in her room, the room that she had come to call home on the Tardis. A sense of disorientation washed over her. She had been in the Library, trapped in the never ending rows of books followed by the strange dark room and then the odd scene at the weird console room. Sitting up, she considered the whole debacle and was so deep in her reverie that she almost didn't realize Donna popping into her room.

"Oh good you're up. Well, spaceman asked the Tardis to inform him when you woke up. So you did and the Tardis did and he sent me to get you. Er. Are you okay? We found you unconscious on the grating so Spaceman put you in your room. You were out for awhile. Hello?"

Donna tapped Sorley on the shoulder.

"I had a weird… dream. If you could call it a dream."

"One of those hyper realistic dreams?" Donna asked, flopping onto Sorley's bed. "My. Your room is huge! With the capital H. I don't even think you can call it a room anymore… Er, right the dream! I think the Doctor's rambling is starting to rub off me. What was it about?"

Sorley recounted the dream to Donna who looked pensively at her. "Next time you should try pinching yourself. Heard you can't feel pain. Maybe you should ask the Doctor."

Donna got off the bed and pull Sorley up. "Come on!" she said and pushed Sorley out of the room.

The Doctor was tinkering with the Tardis again when they entered. Sorley stared at the time rotor, this time placing a hand onto it. The time rotor wheezed almost cheerfully.

"Sorley?"

She turned to look at him who was still lying on the grating, deep in wires. "It's okay. It was the Tardis wasn't it?"

He frowned. Donna had described Sorley's experience and while he was very eager to write it off as a dream, he found he was inclined to consider it a bit more than that. There was a nagging thought in his head when he heard about it.

"Do you think it was her?" he asked, feeling out her thoughts before re-broaching a forgotten subject.

"It's possible. It was very…clinical. But weird. She said I was 840 years old. I think I might have accidentally tapped onto something else. I mean. How can I be 840 years old? I'm quite sure I'm only…" Sorley paused in mid-rant. She had no idea how old she was anymore. All the travelling in the Tardis through space and time made linear time seem unreal. "26? I think I'm 26."

"Quite impossible to be 840 years old. My preliminary scans would have picked up that you weren't an ordinary human."

Sorley stared at the Doctor. A second turned into a minute and he scratched his sideburn, feeling terribly awkward at her very intense staring.

"You're the Doctor." Sorley deadpanned.

He quirked an eyebrow at her. "I believe we established that the day we met."

"No. You're THE Doctor," Sorley repeated.

"Yes… we most definitely established that day. I'm the Doctor. This is the Tardis. Are you sure you're okay?" He buzzed his sonic at her.

She waved the sonic away, slightly miffed. "I know you. I saw you. I mean I watched you. You're this… TV show at home with slight differences. I forgot all about it. Thomas showed me. I watched it. Just one or two series, it was pretty fun. I mean, YOU were pretty funny."

The Doctor and Donna watched her pace round the console. "I think the teleport sort of shorted her." Donna whispered to him. The Doctor would have normally rolled his eyes at her comment but Sorley was really acting weird.

He grabbed Sorley, staring carefully into her eyes, he spoke slowly, "Calm down and tell us what's going on. What's this about a TV show?"

"I remember!" Sorley laughed. She bounced on her feet with a large smile on her face. "I have this whole truck of memories bulldozing in my mind. It feels incredible!"

"What do you remember?" Donna asked.

"Bits and pieces, but way more than I used to. It used to feel empty up here." She tapped the side of her head. "You're the Doctor. They call you tenth back home from the regen number. You were up on the Moon with Martha. There were judoon. Martha, Jack…"

She stopped in her tracks. "The Master." She whispered. "He's coming. Oh it makes sense now."

"What about the Master? Who's coming? What makes sense?" The Doctor demanded. "How do you know about Martha? Did Donna tell you?" He glanced at Donna who shook her head frantically.

"It's this show on Telly. It's your journey through the stars. There were dinosaurs on the spaceship! I love that episode." Sorley clapped her mouth realizing she had given a spoiler away. She remember Thomas telling her about that lady River. "I can't tell you anything. It's… spoilers."

He glared at her. His jaw working under the weight of the many choice words he wanted to say but would regret. "Dinosaurs on the spaceship. That's ridiculous. What are dinosaurs doing on the spaceship? What you know of my past in that case."

"You… I… don't really know much. I think I watched only a few. Blink… where this episode you went into the… 1969? And you were trapped there with Martha until a man Billy would be caught by the Weeping Angels and be sent back in time to you to carry a message to Sally Sparrow. I think it's Sally Sparrow. Oh and then the episode where you met Donna again! With all the fat children. I mean children made of fat."

Donna made a face at that memory. "I remember that. I was hunting Martian down and had decided finding out about the fat walking away was more interesting. Fact it was really... the Fat walking away. You know all those times, those ads make up slogans to entice you. 'Because you deserve it', 'Just do it'. You never expect one to be actually a real promise. The Fat just walks away. It sort of-"

"What can you tell me about the future?" The Doctor asked, interrupting Donna.

Sorley twiddled her thumbs, opening and closing her mouth a few times. She pointed upwards. "The End of Time. It's coming. He'll knock four times."

He leaned on the console, staring hard at it. His knuckles turning white as it clutched the sides. The Doctor had thought that Sorley would be an interesting person, just not this interesting. He pulled the hand brake, then reached over to input the coordinates, beginning the start of his rather haphazard running round the console table.

"Right. I found us an interesting planet. It's called the Speculo which means Mirror in Latin. I haven't seen this planet for a long time. Not since my academy days in fact. Quite hard to find. It's hidden behind three moons that circle around the planet. This makes ships difficult to land. After the humans colonized Speculo, they were cut off from the rest of the universe due to the difficulty of docking. The moons produce different gravity which pull and tug ships into pieces. After several attempts to rescue the people which in turn produced more stranded people, the 76th century humans gave up."

He rambled on though his heart wasn't really into it. He needed to think, to brood and right now the Doctor wasn't sure if he thinking would be produce anything productive. His mind was on a fizz. Oh, that sounded awful even in his mind.

"Here we are! Speculo, ten millennium after the planet was cut off from the universe. The year is 10,042." He grabbed his coat and without waiting for the two women, he stepped out of the Tardis. Sunshine, birds, winding streets spiralled out in front of him. Rows of neat white rock like houses lined the street. It was so much like medieval earth yet not really. There was a touch of non-earth feeling. The sky wasn't blue, it was the wrong shade and so were the clouds. The Doctor watched the people going about their daily business. There were bicycles and people sitting on horse like things. They weren't really horses. Instead of hoofs, they had paws like dogs.

"What are those?" Donna asked.

"I don't know!" he beamed. He had lived so long and had yet to see such a creature. How he loved this feeling.

"They look like those Chinese kirins." Sorley remarked, popping out beside them.

"Chinese kirins?" Donna questioned.

"Yes they-"

"They are a mix between the Chinese dragon and a deer. Scales, flowing mane, antlers,  _hoofs_ ," the Doctor said, quickly interrupting Sorley's explanation. "I'd say they're less like a kirin and closer to a griffon. At least they have the right feet and the right shape."

"Really. A griffon?" Donna scoffed. "Even I know what a griffon looks like. They have the right feet alright, but I think a mix between a wolf and a horse would be a better description."

"That's why I was going to say like a kirin but with different feet!" Sorley said with an exasperated tone.

"Excuse me, what are those called?" The Doctor asked a vendor, pointing to the mount.

"Those are Kirfons. How do you not know what those are called? Where have you been living young man?" The man frowned at the Doctor.

"Well… we sort of live under a rock and don't get out often. In fact it's our first time coming out in twenty years." He shrugged.

"Twenty years? You three look barely thirty."

"Yea, our parents let us out for the first time in twenty years. Sort of taking in the sights."

"Ah. Victim of the Mirror?"

"The Mirror?"

The man pointed at the castle that rose into the sky. "There is a mirror in there that no one can look at it. All those who look into it will never return. The Royal family died out that way. There were many victims before they close the whole castle down. Many of the victims became hermits and their families became hermits."

The Doctor hummed contemplatively before smiling at the man. "Molto Bene! Thank you!" He hurried over to the two that were already walking towards the castle.

"Young man! Word of advice!" The vendor shouted. "Don't look into the Mirror!"

The Doctor waved. "So we got the mysterious Mirror in the castle!" he bounced excitedly. "What I think is that after those centuries and centuries of being cut off from the universe, the planet forgot about space travel and all the things outside their planet. Something must have passed by and dropped the teleportation device into it. And since it looks like a mirror, they called it a Mirror."

"We're just going to pick it up, bring it back to the Tardis and bring it home."

The castle was deserted. Not even a single guard was there. Apart from the odd looking sky and the odd looking mounts, it was looking to be a safe trip. Donna could hear their footsteps echo away. The Doctor stilled his feet at a set of large ornate doors. He waved his sonic screwdriver over the door. "It's here."

"You don't say." Donna said, her fingers tracing the carvings. "I could have guessed it too."

"I'm not the one who put it there. Allons-y!" He smirked and pushed the door open.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"Theta! Akytior's here!" Romana called out.

"I'm fixing the Tardis!" The Doctor said, popping his head just out of the Tardis' console for a moment.

"Hi grandfather! Alex, David Jr greet your great grandpa."

"Hello great grandfather!" The two boys ran over and hugged him tightly.

"Hello! I didn't expect you all to come. Where's David?" he asked, hugging them tightly he swung them up into the air. The two boys cheered loudly, asking for more.

"David's in the kitchen with Ian and Grandmother. We brought more of the tea that you loved so much the last time."

He gave them large kisses on the cheeks and set them running to the playground. The Doctor reached over and gave Akytior a friendly hug. "How have you been?"

"Good. We're thinking of moving back to Gallifrey soon. The High Council cleared David for staying here seeing that all three of our children have been accepted at the academy."

"They have?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Well they couldn't reject us not when grandmother is the president and you're the famous war hero that ended the last Great Time War." She bumped him with a light chuckle. "Imagine the Kithriach would say if he found out that the High Council rejected us."

The Doctor laughed. He wouldn't put it pass Romana to storm into the High Council and demand a reason for their rejection if they had rejected Akytior. Quences would have done the same too.

"I heard the two of you are looming another soon."

"Yes. Quences approved of us having another." He lay down on the deep red grass, watching the burnt orange sky.

"Any idea what you're going to name him or her?"

"Romana suggested Caelumanounao, I thought Paxerouloumous would be nicer."

Akytior laughed. "Peace in old high gallifreyan? They'd be laughed in the academy. Everyone has modern gallifreyan names now. I think grandmother's one is better. At least it's a modern gallifreyan name."

He sulked. "But mine sounds so much nicer. Who wants to be named after the sky."

"I think she suggested that because you love staring into the sky. Every time I drop by, it's either you lying down here watching the sky or tinkering in your Tardis. Speaking of which, what's wrong with your Tardis?" She glanced at the wiring and grimaced. "It's so messy. Is that the Helmic Regulator? Why did you take out the Helmic Regulator?"

"It was on a fizz! Ooh, never going to say that again." He cringed.

"Even the subneutron circuits?" She held up the object in her hand with a quizzical look.

"Oh come on Akytior! No judging."

"I'm not judging." She folded her arms. "I don't see why you bother even fixing it up. It's a type 40. It's ancient and spotty. I'm sure the High Council would approve of you getting a type 107 TTC."

"I like my Tardis!" he complained, hastily taking the offending wire and objects out of her grasp. "You youngsters just decommission your TTC like its nothing."

She rolled her eyes. "If you say so, Grandfather. Come on, I can hear Grandmother calling us in for tea."

"Oh yes. Tea!" he tucked the wires into his pocket and looped his arm over his granddaughter's shoulders. "Tell me about the children's latest adventures too."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

It was dark. Sorley found she liked it. The darkness that surrounded her. The tiny pinpricks that seemed to stretch out far beyond what her eyes can see. There was nothing else but her and the darkness and she found it comforted her in an odd sort of way.

She spread out, letting the darkness, the stars lull her to a sleep that had no beginning and end.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"It's no good sitting there, Donna. These days no one but you are unemployed." Sylvia huffed.

"Oh come off it. I'm doing my best. I wasn't my fault that I got sacked."

"That's what you said the last time. You just couldn't take it and when to yell at Miller. You had to yell at him. No man's going to ever want you with your temper. No career, no man. You're going to spend the rest of your life on dole I tell you."

"Stop it mum."

"No man's going to come and wave a magic wand in front of you"

Finally sick of the nagging, Donna slipped off the chair and slammed the door behind her. She thrust her hands deep into her pockets, setting off down the street with no aim at all. She had often left to join gramps on the hill to watch the stars when her mum got into a nagging mode. However since spring two years ago, gramps had passed away. They said it was an accident. She doubted it. There was something missing in her life. Something that she couldn't put her finger on. Something was wrong with the world, this world. Donna stopped and looked up into the dark sky. The clear sky shone brilliantly with its tiny speckles of flickering light. So beautiful. She had seen something far more beautiful than this.

Something was missing.

She stopped suddenly. Her eyes still staring into the sky, people yelled at her for blocking the pavement but she didn't care. Something was wrong. She had to leave. Donna ran, pushing past the passer-bys, running through the red lights. She kept running. Her heart was beating rapidly in her chest, her lungs felt like they were burning; her legs were felt like they were going to give way anytime soon. Still she kept on running.

She was looking for something. That something that was missing.

"Doctor!" She called out in a half-sob. He wouldn't have left her just like that. He wouldn't have abandoned her. He wouldn't, right?

For some strange reason, her feet stopped outside a building. A dream, a faint memory, the strange buzzing in her head. Donna didn't question it. She pushed open the doors and finally stopping at a blue box.

"The Tardis." She pushed the door open. It was the orange console room that she had spent hours in here hanging for her life on the railings.

"Who are you?" A familiar male voice asked behind her. "How did you come in?"

Donna spun around. The Doctor dressed in his favourite brown pin-striped suit frowned at her. Taking his sonic screwdriver out, he scanned her. "Stop bleeping me. You abandoned me! Why!?"

"Abandoned you? Do I know you?" he raised an eyebrow at her.

"Of course you know me you prawn. You kidnapped me on my wedding day!" she smacked him on the head.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"That's for abandoning me! Did you abandon Sorley as well?" She smacked him again at his quizzical look. "That's for abandoning Sorley!"

"Look. Did you come from the future? Because I definitely don't know you or Sorley. I certainly didn't kidnap you on your wedding day. Why would I do that in the first place?"

"What? You abandoned me and forgot about me?!" She smacked him even harder.

"Ow! Would you stop that! Okay, okay. Let me try to get you back to wherever you were at my future point of time. Just let me know when was the last time you were with me. The future me."

"Well we went to the parallel world then the Library. Oh. Speculo. That was the last place we were at."

"I just came back from the Library. I don't remember you." He scratched his sideburn and decided to scan her full rotation this time.

"Stop bleeping me!" She snatched his sonic screwdriver away. "What do you mean you don't remember me! You forgot me!?"

"No seriously. I've been travelling alone for awhile."

"How long is awhile? What about R… Martha?" Donna wanted to ask what about Rose, then she had remembered how he had been so heartbroken that day.

"Who's Martha?"

"Martha. The companion before me."

"I haven't had a companion since R… my last friend."

"You haven't had another companion since Rose? Seriously?"

His eyes darkened, staring at Donna unwaveringly. It felt like a drill, boring into her very soul with a scorching heat.

"Who are you?" Anger rolled off him in a palpable wave. "How do you know about Rose?"

Donna backed away from him. "Doctor. You told me about her yourself." She raised her hands in a motion to calm him down.

"You're part of Torchwood, aren't you?" He spat.

"There's really something wrong here. You don't remember me. Listen. Please."

"I don't give second chances. Who are you?" His voice was clear and precise, absolute fury dripped from every word.

The door of the Tardis slammed shut and dematerialization begun. The Doctor ran to the console. "What are you doing? No no no. Stop it!"

The console buzzed angrily and shocked him as he moved to deactivate the dematerialization circuit. "Come on old girl! We have a strange woman in here! We don't want that!" He coaxed and moved to turn it off again. This time, the Tardis shocked him harder.

She chortled at his description. It was the very same

He turned to glare at Donna. "I don't know what you did to her, I'll warn you now. You better be ready when I find out. Because when I find out, there'll be nothing stopping me."

The console shocked him again angrily. Donna glanced at the console, then she reached out to place a tentative hand on it. "Don't touch my Tardis," he said darkly, his hand almost bruising hers in his tight grip. The pain, she felt the pain. Was this really real or was this a dream?

Donna shook her head and rubbed her nose bridge only to realize the Doctor's sonic screwdriver was still in her hand. "Sorry," she mumbled, handing it back to him. "I didn't mean to upset you." She slouched on her usual spot in the console room.

"It's just that nothing feels real," she said. She pinched herself hard "Even this pain. It feels… wrong."

"Wrong? How?" He folded his arms and regarded her with hard look.

"Something is missing. Out of the loop. Sorley's missing. You forgot me. You forgot Sorley. You shouldn't forget her. You wouldn't. You accidentally kidnapped her. You wouldn't just abandon her."

"How do you accidentally kidnap someone?" The Doctor asked, raising a sceptical eyebrow at her.

"She was going to faint or collapse and she let her into the Tardis so rest for a bit on the steps. The door slammed shut and the Tardis flew away."

"Well that's rubbish. I would have just brought her back in that case."

"Except that it was an alternate universe and whatever was letting us through was no longer available."

"The walls of reality were closed during the war. Travelling to alternate reality is impossible."

"Yes, that's what you said as well. But we did and we came back. We spent a long time in the alternate reality just fixing the Tardis so that we could have enough parts and energy to get back to our original world. My original world."

The Doctor noticed the change of pronoun though he chose not to comment on it. "So what happened in Speculo?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know." He repeated.

"I don't know. It's like," Donna pursed her lips. Her mind suddenly remembering what Sorley always said when she couldn't remember something.

_I just can't remember! It's like some hazy fuzzy memory!_

"Hazy fuzzy memory," she finished with a smile. Donna always thought Sorley's description was hilarious. How could memories be hazy fuzzy? Now she understood. It was like looking through a dirty, foggy old glass. She sort of remembered it faintly, there was something there but she didn't know what. "If I focused hard enough, I barely remember Speculo. If I don't, everything just fades away."

Donna swung her head up at the Doctor at her sudden epiphany. "It's trying to keep me here. That's why it felt wrong."

The Tardis shuddered to a stop. Without waiting for the Doctor, Donna ran out of the Tardis. They had landed in Speculo. The colour of the sky, the weird mounts, the neat row of houses. This was the place. She ran down the buildings. Down the barren stony pathway, her feet echoed in the empty hallways and up the stairs. Donna did not stop running until she stopped in front of the ornate doors. She sagged against the wall wheezing, steeling herself for what might be behind the door. All she had remembered was tracing the carvings on the door.

"It's here?" The Doctor asked. He had arrived shortly behind her but unlike her, he was not even breathless. He scanned the door with his sonic screwdriver.

Donna stared at the door. The door was different. It was still as big as she remembered it to be, but it didn't have any of the fancy carvings on it.

"It was this. This was the last thing I saw before I woke up."

"The readings seem normal like everything else out here." He licked his finger and stuck in up in the air. "The air tastes fine, just a bit cabbagy. I suppose there is something odd going about here. I never really noticed how cabbagy it was until you mentioned it."

"The air tastes cabbagy? How does the air taste cabbagy?"

The Doctor shrugged. "You know I've travelled with you for over five years linearly and I don't believe you've ever mentioned that the air tastes like cabbage." Donna said.

"Five years? Really?"

"Well give and take. It's a bit hard to count when you're in a time machine and I'm always popping by home every few months. You mentioned something like that a few days ago I think. Or was it a few weeks?" Donna looked thoughtful.

"Sounds like my copy had better luck than me. I still don't believe that there's a copy of me out there. We always regarded Time Lords as multidimensional beings."

"What? Multi- what?"

"Means across all the dimensions, there's always only one copy of us."

"Right. So what do we do?"

"First you tell me what you were all here for and then I'll think of something.

"There was a mirror. Spaceman said it was some alien tech that was teleporting the locals away. He wanted to retrieve it and-"

"Bring the locals back and return the teleporter to the original owner." The Doctor scanned the door again, this time he stared really hard at the scans. He took a moment before glancing at Donna. "I forgot to ask for your name."

"Donna."

"Donna. You're a brave girl. I need you to listen to me. I'm going to open the door." He tossed his sonic screwdriver to her. "I've already set the correct settings. Just press the button and wave it at the teleporter."

"What about you?"

"Ready?"

"Doctor. What about you?"

"If my theory is right, whatever that is behind the mirror will take me as well." He replied opening the door.

"Doctor!"

A light shone out, reaching out, gripping him and he faded.

Donna hid behind the wall. Sticking her hand out, she pressed the button hard and long. There was a loud crack, a shatter. She just continued pressing. Donna didn't know how long she stood there, but when it was dark and the sun had set, she finally peeked into the room. Her feet stepped carefully into the empty room. It wasn't just a mirror. It had been a wall of mirror. She had destroyed the mirror but at the price of this world's Doctor and for what? She was still stuck in this world.

Donna sat in a corner. She was a strong woman; she had always prided herself for that. So she sat there, staring at the pieces of mirror. Her mind was blank. All that she could think of was "What would the Doctor do if he were here?"

_The mirror._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is probably extremely confusing. My beta reader got confused on the first draft. I assure you that everything that is valid to the plot of this non-canon adventure will be explained in the next chapter. If it's not explained in the next chapter, you can take it as it's related to the overall plot of the story. There are a lot more questions in this chapter than answers. And also me filling some unintended plot holes before I forget about them.
> 
> Do people prefer shorter chapters but shorter waiting times or longer chapters and longer waiting times? I generally prefer longer chapters, not sure about you guys.
> 
> Up next: Non-canon chapter part 2 - Down the rabbit hole


	7. Down the rabbit hole

" _Hello_ " - Gallifreyan

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Her thief was so dense. So terribly dense. How much would it take for him to realize it? He goes swanning off with his adventures with all his strays thinking that the prophecy had passed but the prophecy had never passed.

"Not good. Not good at all." She collapsed a bit. "How do you walk around in these things?"

Her thief slung his arm around her waist to help her on the stairs. "We're not quite there yet… just hold on. Amy, this is…" He glanced at her. No matter how he was going to say it, it was going to sound weird. "Well…"

He turned back to Amy. Might as well just say it. "She's my Tardis. Except she's a woman. She's a woman, and she's my Tardis." He pointed at her rather excitedly. She could sense his excitement as he repeated it. He wasn't going to like how the conversation was going to end.

"She's the Tardis?" The Ginger Pond exclaimed. The Pretty Boy was still holding the Other. The Other wasn't doing well. She knew the Other wasn't going to wake.

"And she's a woman. She's a woman and she's the Tardis." Her thief repeated even more excitedly.

"Did you wish really hard?"

"Shut up! Not like that!" he replied quickly, his face getting red.

Oh this was the point where she had to introduce herself. "Hello. I'm… Sexy."

He pointed at the strays. "Still shut up." His ears were red now. "How is Sorley?"

Pretty Boy shook his head, he was still sitting on the floor with the Other halfway in his arms. "She's not going to make it if we don't get her to the medbay asap."

Her thief bit his lip.

"The Environment has been breached. Nephew, kill them all." House said.

"Where's Nephew?" Pretty boy asked panicking.

Ginger Pond pointed at where the makeshift console was. "He was standing right where you materialized."

"Ah. Well. He must have been redistributed."

"Meaning what?" Ginger pond asked.

"You're breathing him." Her thief replied. The Ginger pond waved her hands as though it'd help.

"Doctor, she's not breathing." He pumped the Other's chest in attempt to resuscitate her. "Come on! Breathe! Sorley breathe!"

"Doctor. I did not expect you." House said.

"Well. That's me all over, isn't it? Lovely old unexpected me." He clasped his hands tightly. He glanced at Pretty Boy was still tried to resuscitate the Other. She was impressed with his perseverance. Her thief pursed his lips tightly, hoping against hope that he could speed the conversation up to save both her and the Other.

"The big question is, now you're here, how to dispose of you? I could play with gravity…" They all get pulled to the grating for a few seconds, fighting the extra pull. "Or I could evacuate the air from this room and watch you choke." House continued and removed the oxygen.

"You really don't want to do that." Her thief said. Her body was dying. She could hear him in his mind repeating it like a mantra.

_Come on old girl. Come on Sorley._

Everything was beginning to glaze over. She could feel Pretty Boy lean over her. She had to tell him. The irony of it all was that they were at the beginning and at the end. "The only water in the forest is the river. You'll need to know that one day," she whispered.

"Hey. Hang in there, old girl. Not long now. It'll be over soon," her thief said, stroking her cheek.

"I always liked it when you called me old girl," she replied.

"The end of the beginning, the beginning of the end." She whispered too faintly for anyone to hear.

Her thief will understand one day.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Donna sat there in the shadows staring at the bits of mirror. All her life she had been brave, loud mouthed, never afraid to voice her opinions. The truth was all that was just a façade. Donna was just a normal woman seeking for something adventure so as long as she had a cuppa every few trips and they weren't excessively life-threatening. Travelling with the Doctor had never been one of the safest thing she had done but with him Donna had never felt that she would never get to go back home should she want to. Sitting alone in the mirror room made her realize that this might be the adventure that she might never go home from.

With the information proffered to her by Martha and what small glimpses of knowledge about Rose, Donna had known but never really considered never going home as an option. They both had been able to go home to their families. They had not died somewhere or lost all alone. The Doctor had always managed to ensure their safety and happiness to a certain extent. It's like reading the news and thinking it'd never happen to you. Then one day it does.

Donna breathed deeply. Counting to three, she exhaled and repeated the cycle. When she finally felt like herself again, Donna pulled herself up. Her hands gripped tightly on the rough wall as she did. Her legs felt like they could barely support her, but she did anyway.

It was dark still. She could see the slow lightening of the odd coloured sky from her position. Almost daybreak, she had been in the castle for almost a whole twelve hours. That was assuming that this planet had twenty four hours in a day.

Donna pursed her lips at the mess in the room. The mirror had shattered almost into tiny bits of dust, there were a still large pieces around but very few. Perhaps something might pick up on the sonic screwdriver. Donna eyed the screwdriver that the Other Doctor had given her. The settings had been set to destroy the mirror. Assuming her trail of thoughts were correct, that would mean-

Donna tapped her head, trying to recall what her Doctor had said more than once.

_Vibrate the molecules, fry the bindings to shatterline the interface._

The setting on the screwdriver was wrong in that case if she wanted to do a scan for something. Donna looked at it. Okay, trying to set the screwdriver was far too complicated for her. She was just a temp. Okay. The man yelled at the Doctor and said not to look into the mirror. The keyword here is 'look into'. Donna took her jacket off and wrapped the largest piece of mirror she could find.

As she walked back to the Tardis, Donna could not help but feel the weight of uselessness driving her to the ground. She was useless with the capital U. Back on the Gallifreyan ship, Sorley had somehow miraculously taken the circuit down to enable the Doctor and her to return safely. She might have had some help, but she had done the remainder by herself. From what she had heard from the Doctor later, Sorley taking the circuit down was no small feat. He had taken a course of five years in the academy just to solely fix and repair such circuits. It had become over the years a thing that he would most frequently check and upkeep which was why he was able to fix it so fast. For Sorley, a mere human, with no knowledge, no guidance and armed with just a sonic screwdriver, to have done it was impossible.

This thing Donna now faced was not impossible. If Sorley was here, she would have been able to get everything fixed in a short amount of time. Yes, Donna envied Sorley at times. She was smarter than she let on, far smarter than a temp would ever be. Donna was not proud of it but she would tell no one about it. She hid behind her loud brash ways. In some ways, Donna was relieved that Sorley was not very much like her. Sorley was open about most things and sarcastic but she didn't speak that much.

The walk back to the Tardis felt like a longer walk than it really was. The shard of Mirror was starting to weigh heavily in her arms despite the fact that it probably wasn't very heavy. Donna couldn't remember the last time she slept or ate or even had a sip of water. It had been out of the frying pan and into the fire the whole trip. Had it been only a few hours since she 'woke' or had it been days? Time seemed absent.

Donna paused outside the Tardis when she finally came up to it. She gingerly placed a hand on the door and pushed. To her surprise, the Tardis opened up easily. Having not been an official companion of this Doctor and not having the key from her Doctor, she had her doubts on whether she could re-enter the Tardis. She supposed it may or may not have to do with how the Tardis seemed to help her earlier. She wasn't sure why it was helping her or how, but with so little help available, Donna wasn't going to think too much into it.

"Okay Tardis. I need some help." Donna said as she placed the shard onto the console. She unwrapped it, careful not to take any accidental glances at it.

"Voice interface enabled." A hologram of the Doctor appeared.

"Doctor! You're alive!"

"I am not the Doctor. I am a voice interface." It stated, looking exactly like the Doctor but the complete opposite. There was the missing cheeriness and smiles that Donna had grown used to.

"But you look like the Doctor…"

"I am not the Doctor. I am a voice interface." It repeated.

"Okay okay. Tell me how I can save the Doctor."

Lights appeared around the console. "Am I supposed to press those buttons? What does it do?"

"It activates the scanner for the mirror."

Donna looked at the shard. "Okay. So I need to scan the shard. How will that help to save the Doctor?"

If the Tardis could roll her eyes or sigh, Donna was fairly certain she did both when she explained. "Scanning the shard will be able to locate the signal that had taken the Doctor away. It will be possible to materialize around the Doctor when he has been located."

Donna nodded and pushed the buttons that the Tardis had lit up. Gallifreyan text began streaming on the monitor. "I can't read it!" Donna muttered. She turned to the voice interface. "Can you change it to English?"

The circles changed to English, but it didn't really help. It wasn't like Donna was going to begin understanding all the technical stuff that was scrolling on the monitor. Donna slumped onto the jump seat, watching the monitor.

"Scanning the shard will take five hours."

Donna jumped at the voice interface's words. She had been lost in her thoughts that she might have zoned off. The Tardis was telling her to get some rest right? She stood to talk to the room.

"Wake me when the scan is ready."

The voice interface disappeared with what Donna assumed was an assertion.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

He was at peace. The last Great Time War was over. It had been a miracle that he had managed to stop the paradoxes that had created it. If it had not been for Romana, they would be still fighting the war. Something nudged at him that this wasn't how the war ended. The Doctor found he couldn't care. He had his wife, his children, his grandchildren. He had the burnt orange skies, the bright silver-leafed trees the deep red grass.

The Doctor lay there and wept. He wasn't sure why he was crying. He had everything he wanted. Something was wrong. He knew it but he didn't want to admit it.

" _What's wrong Sweetie? Why are you crying_?"

He looked up startled. Romana had turned over him with a worried look. " _What's wrong_?" she placed a hand on his chest, her delicate eyebrows knotting.

He smoothed her frown and placed a kiss on her forehead. The Doctor pulled her closer and leaned his face into her hair. It smelt like vanilla and milk, a smell that he thought was nostalgic, but it was wrong.

" _Just a dream. A bad dream_." He whispered in her hair and kissed her gently.

She sighed and curled in his arms to sleep. " _Good night Theta_."

" _Sweet dreams_."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The lights were ready on the console when Donna walked back in. She had gone to rest but the truth was all she did was toss and turn. She was out here, doing something possibly to save the three of them. Somewhere in Donna lurked a fear that if she fell asleep, she would wake up back in her mum's house. Her gramps would be still dead. Her gramps wasn't dead. Her gramps shouldn't be dead.

She shook her head and followed the lights around the console, pushing them in the order they appeared. They were flying to the Doctor. The Doctor would help them.

The Tardis landed with a loud thud. "Doctor?" she came out. The sky was orange, burnt orange. The grass was deep red. She had never seen such a beautiful planet before. All the five years of travelling and she had assumed she had seen a relative amount of it. Or at least the best sights of them all. Clearly the Doctor was hiding one of them.

"Doctor…" she called out again, trying her best to be not distracted by the sight.

A lady with blond hair looked up at her and frowned. She got off from her gardening and pulled the odd hair she was wearing.

"Who are you? You are not Gallifreyan. How did you get the Tardis? Which Time Lord are you with? Where is your Guardian? Show me your permit."

"I…" Donna searched the area furtively. "I'm just here for the Doctor. Please, do you know where the Doctor is?" She clasped her hands together, swallowing hard. "It's very important and urgent."

The lady stared at her then called out, " _Theta, someone is here to see you."_

" _Who is it?"_ A familiar male voice replied. Donna couldn't understand them. She couldn't understand them. Donna took a step back, staring wide-eyed at the scenery. There was only one language that the Tardis didn't translate.

"I'm on Gallifrey," Donna breathed in amazement. She bent down touching the red grass, laughing loudly. "I'm on Gallifrey!"

"It's so…' She searched for a word but found she couldn't find one that would properly describe the feeling she was feeling. "Beautiful."

The lady smiled. Footsteps resounded in the house and the door swung open. "Oh. Hello!" The Doctor blinked at her owlishly. He was dressed in his favourite brown pin-striped suit. He took his sonic screwdriver out and scanned her.

"Human. Interesting scans. How did you get…" his words were cut off when he realized the blue box behind Donna. "This is…"

He whipped around to the garage. His beloved blue box was still sitting there. Then how did she get it?

"How did you get this?" He scanned her again.

"Stop bleeping me!" she smacked the sonic screwdriver away. He hadn't recognized her. Was she with another copy? Her heart sank. "I need to get home."

The Doctor quirked an eyebrow at her.

Donna sighed, placing one hand at her hip, she ran her hand through her hair unhappily. "I'm from another dimension or something. I was travelling with you for five years. Sorley was with us as well. Then we went to Speculo. There was a mirror there that was teleporting locals so you wanted to pick it up and bring it home. We opened the door and then I woke up in this world. Well, not this world. I met a copy of you. That's what he referred to other dimensions of him. He tried to help but he got sucked into the mirror."

She paused at that. Should she mention that she had the shard? She shrugged. "I got the shard. The Tardis - his Tardis helped me locate the signal to the Doctor and showed me how to pilot her. Which led me here. Can you help?"

He frowned. Everything was wrong. He turned back to Romana. Her beautiful gold hair danced in the breeze. The silver leaves waved merrily, the sky above was burnt orange. The air was so crisp, so nostalgic. The beauty of Gallifrey. The truth of it all churned in his stomach. A tear slid down his face. The Doctor made no move to hide his grief. It was cruel. So cruel.

" _Theta?"_ Romana called out. She placed a hand on his arm.

" _Don't touch me._ " He snarled. He backed away from Romana. "This was never real, was it?"

Tears raced from Donna's eyes. "I'm sorry Doctor. I'm so sorry," she said hoarsely.

He wiped the tears away with the back of his hand. "Allons-y. We still have our troublemaker to find," he smiled wryly at Donna.

" _Theta? Where are you going?_ " Romana called out. " _Theta? Don't go!"_

He stopped just before the Tardis' door, placing a hand on the side of the wooden door. The Doctor turned around, taking a last look at Gallifrey. His eyes burning the memory of it like a cigarette butt on flesh. He closed his eyes. His lips trembled, his throat felt like it had swallowed a desert.

" _Goodbye. I'm off to save the world again."_  He slammed the door shut and stalked towards the console.

" _Theta!"_

Donna flinched at the pounding. There was just the sound of the pounding, the sound of the wheezing and the weeping. Then there was silence. She stood there, her eyes watching the solitary unmoving figure at the console.

"Doctor…?" she whispered. She moved to squeeze his shoulder.

"Close the door to the things I do not need anymore,  
To flee from this suffering turmoil, my inner war.  
Goodbye to them all. Goodbye." He whispered.

He clenched the console, his knuckles turning white from its grip.

"It was all a dream. A cruel dream. Darkness, despair, the loss of light and misdirection – it allows you to see the reason behind emotion, the reason that you should have listened to all along." Donna said as she rubbed slow circles on his back.

He looked up with a small smile and squeezed her hand. "Thank you."

"I didn't do anything."

"You did more than you could imagine. How did you managed to break it through? That's the interesting part."

"What do you mean?"

"The worlds are all the same. Just different. The Tardis, me, you, we are all the same people in each world created. The only difference is the aspect, the possibility that was captured for us... And you were the only one who managed to figure it was wrong. Why?"

"But so did you."

"I did, but I wasn't willing to risk everything I had on a chance. I was happy."

"I wasn't. My gramps died. My gramps shouldn't have been dead."

He looked at her, perhaps for the first time since she had joined him travelling. The Doctor had been so used to her brash ways, he never really suspected something underneath the hard shell was so vulnerable.

"Donna…" he started.

"But you were so… fierce. If it hadn't been for the Tardis who slammed the door behind me and dematerialized, the copy of you in my world would have chucked me out." She ploughed on.

" Perhaps the aspect was the Oncoming Storm then," he sighed. He caressed the console. "Tha Tardis recognized you. When you broke the mirror of your world, you broke the lock on your world. We need to break the mirror in this world and find Sorley."

This time they waited until it was dark, closed their eyes before entering the room. It was a simple task now that they knew how to deal with it. The Doctor scanned the room picking up for traces of other signals.

"What about the others?"

He fell silent as he read the logs. "There are no others."

"But weren't there others sucked into the mirror as well? That's what the man told you."

"The mirror was never a mirror. It sucked people in and let them live their lives in its copy worlds until they die. A bit like the weeping angels except the only way to get them out is to break all the mirrors. Unfortunately or fortunately, there are only three active. Me, you and Sorley."

"They all died?"

The Doctor nodded. The Tardis shook and landed heavily. It was a hospital. They had landed in the car park of a hospital. "Why are we here?" Donna asked.

"This is where Sorley's signal is."

"A hospital?"

He took out his sonic screwdriver and began following its beeping. Through the A&E, through the cancer ward and into the long term patients, they finally stopped in front of ward 40, bed A. Sorley was lying on the bed. Her eyes were closed, she was surrounded by the EKG machine and IV drips. The Doctor could hear the machine breathe for her.

"Are you Sorley's friends?" A nurse minding the ward asked the duo.

"Yes."

"That's nice of you to visit her."

The Doctor raised a sceptical eyebrow at the nurse. "No one visits her?"

"Well, they do once in awhile. It's hard for them to hold on hope that she'd wake up when she's been in a vegetative state for over a year. I'm surprised they haven't unplugged her yet. Most families just give up after a year. Well I'll leave you two to her." The nurse nodded and moved on to another bed.

"Hello Sorley." The Doctor said and grazed her face lightly with his finger tip. Donna squeezed Sorley's hand.

"Hang on. We're going to save you." Donna murmured, brushing the hair from her face.

The Doctor started pulling off all the wires. "Distract them Donna." Slinging Sorley over his shoulder, they ran out of the ward.

"Where are you going with our patient," the nurse called out and began carrying for back up.

"To the back!" The Doctor called out as they skidded around a corner. "This way!"

They ran down the hallways, passed the cancer ward. "Doctor here!" Donna hollered, pushing the doors open.

"It's a dead end!"

"No it's not!" Donna threw the chair at the window then the side table. The patients in the room started screaming.

"Sorry! So Sorry for the disturbance!" The Doctor said. Donna kicked the bits of glass panel free and jumped over.

"They're coming from the entrance. Use your sonick thingy!"

"To do what?"

"Alarms!"

The Doctor wrestled his sonic screwdriver out and waved it at the cars. The cars and the hospital started blaring alarms. They pounded over the bitumen, sliding to a stop when they finally entered the blue box. Donna slammed the door shut as the Doctor ran up the stairs to set motion for Speculo.

"Sorley?" Donna shook her. "Doctor, will she wake up?"

"She should. This never happened in reality."

"What happens if she doesn't?"

"Then I'll do a thing."

"You don't have a clue, do you?"

"Donna! We have other things to worry for now. If she doesn't wake up when we get out, I'll think about it. Right now I need to get us out of here."

"I thought you said we need to break all the mirrors to be free."

"If it were that easy, I'm sure people would have escaped right? Do you really think the alien would have let people go that easy?" He cobbled a machine together, his sonic screwdriver buzzing loudly.

"Okay this is what we're going to do." The Doctor handed the machine and a pair of goggles to Donna as they landed. "I'll distract it. The minute you have a shot, you shoot it."

"Will this kill it?" She asked as she put on the goggles.

"Kill it? You humans are so bloody thirsty! Of course not. It'll just paralyze it so I can deactivate the signal and fly us out of the here. The minute you see it go down, you run back into the Tardis. Okay? Allons-y!"

He flung the door open. He had landed them just outside the door. Without pausing his converse feet kicked the door down. The Beast that stood there looked like a dragon that was over ten metres tall and covered in entirely mirror. "Hey there you big… ugly… shiny thing. Name yourself! Planet of origin. Galatic coordinates. Species designation according to the universal ratification of the Shadow Proclamation."

The beast laughed. "Doctor, Doctor. You came on this planet and you don't even know my name."

"Tell me your name!"

It turned and gazed at the Doctor with its large eye. "I am Speculo. I am the planet. I am the last of my kind. The only of my kind."

"The planet is alive!? Wow, blimey." The Doctor swivelled around suddenly, pushing his hands through his hand and clasped his fingers behind his neck. "I didn't even see that coming. What happened to the rest of your kind?"

"There was never the rest of my kind. There was always only me. I am born alone and when I die, another will be born in my place. I am born from an egg but I am the egg."

"Why did you eat the people then?"

"Eat? I never ate them. Only the ones with regrets seek me out. I am the Salvation. I comfort them and let them live a life without regrets till they die."

"But you ate us."

"I took you and the other girl in. She was just an accident." Speculo nodded at Donna.

"So Sorley… Her greatest regret was waking up?" Donna asked.

"She was afraid of remembering who she was and losing the person she was now. I suppose in a way, she wished she never woke up so she would have never been subjected to the 'with memories and without memories' problem." The Doctor explained.

"What is she dreaming about?" Donna asked.

"Watching the stars, the suns burn and fade. Universes rise and fall." Speculo replied.

"Then can we leave?" The Doctor asked. "We… I thought you were a teleportation device that was lost. But it seems that I was wrong. We… I didn't mean to activate you."

"Doctor. A word of advice before you leave. Your song is ending but it's not the end. What we call the beginning is often the end, and to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we all start from."

Speculo blinked and their vision went white. They found themselves in the room. A large mirror stood before them. It was over ten metres tall.

"That's the biggest mirror I've ever seen!" Donna exclaimed.

"Oh. That's nothing. There's bigger mirrors in Miradom." The Doctor said, tucking his hands into his trench coat pocket.

Sorley was still lying on the floor blinking before she slowly got up. "What happened?"

The duo turned and looked at her. "Nothing. Nothing happened. Why are you on the floor?"

Sorley looked at them. "You guys didn't have the dream?"

"What dream?" The Doctor asked, offering a hand to pull her up.

"I dream I was watching the stars. Travelling through space. I was infinite." She said. A smile began to play upon her face.

A flash of burnt orange sky and silver trees flashed through the Doctor's head. "No Nothing at all." He rocked on his feet. "We should go. This isn't a teleporter." He wasn't sure why he said that or why the image of Gallifrey had flashed through his mind. Only a heavy grief seemed to settle at the bottom of his stomach. Something that he'd have to deal with when he got back to the Tardis.

"You guys don't remember anything? Nothing at all?" Sorley frowned. The dream had been so vivid that she could have even said that it was real.

"Nope!" The Doctor replied, popping his P.

"Nothing at all," Donna agreed. "Hey Spaceman. I was thinking of visiting my gramps. Think you can drop me off for a cuppa?"

"Sure. Next stop Earth!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this chapter answered all your questions. If you have any more questions (confusion) please ask. If its not a spoiler, I'll explain it. Maybe I should correct what I replied to a review. There will be Sorley X Doctor BUT since Sorley isn't exactly an OC and she won't be exactly caleld Sorley then, technically its not Sorley X Doctor. But there is no romantic pairing in this arc between Sorley X Doctor.
> 
> Next chapter: Canon – Stolen Earth


	8. Stolen Earth

"Really Doctor. You said we were going back to Earth!" Donna groused. They had landed in a planet called Shan Shen.

"Oh Donna. There's more to life than drinking tea with your gramps. He's not going to run away. Besides I didn't land us here. The Tardis did. If anything you should be complaining to her not me."

"Yea, but you're the pilot."

"That's what he likes to think," Sorley quipped.

"Hey! No dissing the driver now."

"More like chauffeur, really." The two ladies smirked at Donna's remark. It was an old and private joke between them. They had remarked on how the Doctor could be actually called their chauffeur which also led to Donna saying that if she ever had the Doctor as a chauffeur, she would have fired him within a week.

The Doctor looked up in surprise at their words. "What? What? What did you just call me?"

"Well it's quite true," Sorley chuckled and nudged Donna.

"You fly from spot to spot. We're the backseat drivers."

"Oh you're the backseat drivers alright." The Doctor muttered. "Doctor, use the stabilizers! Doctor, learn to drive!" He mimed.

"Not that you're much of a driver either. Took you seven tries before we actually got to Mermimayari to see the purple beaches and mermaids."

They roared with laughter at the memory of them standing at the Tardis. "What did you say to him then?" Sorley said.

"Blimey! You might actually pass your driving exam…" Donna nudged Sorley smirked.

"In another two hundred years," they chorused together.

"Should never have two female companions. They're ganging up on me!" The Doctor grumbled. He strode down the marketplace, his hands deep in the pocket.

"Oh that's pretty!" Sorley exclaimed. She paused at a stall that sold trinkets. She never got enough of trinkets. Back in the Tardis, the Tardis had given her a whole box of trinkets. Never quite like it. Accessories should be bought by oneself. They gave the accessories some kind of memory. When she had muttered that, she had sense an unhappy vibe from the Tardis which led to all the trinkets except the ones she brought disappearing.

Sorley turned to show Donna, only to find she had disappeared into the marketplace. She couldn't fault Donna. The Doctor had given them an unlimited credit thing to spend and Donna loved to shop.

The Doctor leaned over to take a look at her  _yet another_  necklace. He was extremely used to Sorley buying necklaces at every market they stopped. It was beginning to become some kind of collection. "Oh that's… interesting." He pulled on his smarty glasses and took a closer look at it. "Very interesting."

"What is it?"

"It's a Kaushaniva. It's very rare too. They sort of grant a single wish, they don't work very well unless you pray very, very hard and even then it has a high chance of failure. How it looks to each individual differs too. I see a ball of burning sun but you probably don't."

"I see this ball of blackish space. Sort of looks like space," Sorley said.

"I'm not surprised." Whenever the Tardis was in deep space, Sorley would make a cup of tea and sit on the edge of the Tardis watching the stars. Sometimes she'd even ask him to obit around a moon or Earth or something pretty. Barring distractions, the Doctor mentally noted to bring his two companions to the Medusa Cascade. They would, especially Sorley, love it. There was nothing more pleasing than seeing that smile light up his companions face. The Doctor caught himself staring at Sorley. Quickly, he looked back at the trinket thankful that Sorley hadn't noticed.

The shopkeeper nodded in approval at his reply. "You're very knowledgeable, Human."

"Time Lord," he corrected, not really thinking about it as he said.

"Another Time Lord?"

"Another?" He repeated in an incredulous tone. The casual question of the shopkeeper snapped the Doctor's spine in a straight line. He looked carefully at the shopkeeper whose eyes only twinkled in amusement.

"Well, another one just corrected me as well. I thought Time Lords were a myth but yet today I've met into two claiming to be one. How interesting."

Placing the necklace back down, he swivelled his head around. His eyes searching the crowds frantically. "How did he look like? Where did he go?"

"Well he was wearing a bow tie and a tweed jacket." The shopkeeper pointed to an alleyway.

The Doctor hurried through the thronging crowd. Sorley barely keeping pace with him. "Doctor. Doctor!" Sorley had to tell it was just him.

"Hey!" The Doctor yelled and pulled the man wearing tweed jacket to a stop. The man had been hurrying down an alleyway.

"Oh dear." The Doctor heard the bow tie man say as he quickly pushed the blond man behind him. He turned around to face the Doctor tugging his maroon bow tie nervously. "Hello!" He wiggled his hand nervously. His eyes darted from Sorley, back to the Doctor then to whoever who was hidden behind him. The blond man wasn't really that much shorter than the bow tie man, but he had his head bent forward and his back was facing the Doctor. Right beside him was a girl with ginger hair, she giggled in response to something that the blond man muttered. The Doctor hadn't quite managed to make out what he had said even with his Time Lord senses.

No matter, they weren't his focus. The Doctor turned his attention back to the bow tie man. "The shopkeeper said you called yourself a Time Lord. Who are you?"

The Doctor slid his eyes towards the person the bow tie man was trying to hide. "Who's that? Who are you trying to hide?"

"Spoilers, Doctor." The ginger girl said, stepping from behind the bow tie man and taking some of the attention away from the blond man. Large green eyes with freckles, she looked exactly like Sorley, older but not that much older. Her style was slightly different too. Printed dresses with stockings but still the same old high tops. "You can't… see him yet. It'll be a paradox. This is a paradox itself already. He had to land at this timing."

"He's always been a terrible driver," the blond man muttered.

"Sorley? But you're…" he turned around to see the younger Sorley looking somewhat excitedly at the bow tie man.

"Hello!" Sorley giggled and shook the bow tie man's hand. "It's so very nice to meet you." She waved at her doppelganger who waved back.

"No…" He inspected the bow tie man.

"Yes. I'm the Doctor." The bow tie man said, then as though to prove a point, he whipped out his sonic screwdriver.

"Really Doctor. Is your sonic screwdriver a proof of legitimacy?" The man behind deadpanned.

"Be quiet K- Kaizack." Eleven scolded the blond man. The older Sorley snorted as the blond man groused. Eleven clasped his hands with a grim smile. "Right. Uhm…"

He frowned thoughtfully. "You need to go look for Donna." The Older Sorley offered when the Other Doctor was unable to come up with a suitable line.

"Yes, thank you Sorley." Eleven said, snapping his fingers at her. He motioned wildly in the air. "You got a long day ahead of you. We got to go back and get the Kaushaniva-" He stopped in the middle of his sentence when the blond man who was still hidden behind Eleven smacked him. "Ow!" Eleven rubbed his head.. "Spoilers. Er. Stuff. Lots of stuff."

A scream pierced through the markets.

"That's your cue." Eleven said. "Good luck!"

The Doctor grabbed Sorley's hand and dashed off to the sound.

"Donna!?" He burst through the tent. "Are you alright?"

She ran and hugged the Doctor. "Oh god…!"

The Doctor patted her back, pulling Sorley in the three way hug. "You're okay." He said, he kissed Donna's hair then Sorley's. Vanilla and Milk. A smell so nostalgic and felt so right.

_This is right this time._

The thought flickered through his mind. It didn't make sense to him. The Doctor had never smelt Sorley's hair before, it shouldn't be nostalgic to him. A lot of things about her didn't make sense to him. He pushed it to the back of his mind at the sight of the dead beetle.

He released them and squatted beside it, poking it with an incense stick.

"Can't remember. It's slipping away. You know, like when you try and think of a dream and it just sort of goes."

"Just got lucky, this thing . It's one of the Trickster's brigade. Changes a life in tiny little ways. Most times, the universe just compensates around it, but you… great big parallel world!"

"Hold on, you said parallel worlds are sealed off."

"They are. I'm starting to think they're not to be honest. This is like the third time I had to correct myself on that subject. In any case, you had one created around you."

He looked at her curiously. "Funny thing is, seems to be happening a lot. To you."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, The Library and then this…"

"Then Speculo," Sorley added.

"Speculo?" They said.

"Nothing happened at Speculo," Donna frowned. Sorley had been rather insistent that something happened. "Neither the Doctor and I remembered anything."

"Gallifrey," The Doctor said absentmindedly.

"What?" The two companions gave him quizzical looks.

"Why did I say that? Ignore me. I say stuff." He waved it away. "Sometimes I think there's way too much coincidences around you, Donna. I met you once. Then I met your grandfather. Then I met you again. In the whole wide universe, I met you for a second time. It's like something's binding us together."

"What about Sorley? I'm nothing special. Nothing compared to Sorley."

"What do you mean by that?" Sorley said. "You're brilliant, loud, funny. Never afraid to speak your mind. I always wished I was like you."

"You mean that? I'm just-" Donna paused at a sudden recollection. "She said that."

"Who did?"

"That woman… I can't remember."

"Well, she never existed now."

"No but she said… the stars… she said the stars are going out."

"Yeah, but that world's gone." There was something wrong. Sound big was coming up on the timelines, the Doctor could feel it.

"All the worlds. Every world. The Darkness is coming," Sorley said.

"What?" Sorley had been sitting there beside Donna. Was it an episode from the Telly? "Her name is Rose Tyler. The Bad wolf's coming."

He jumped up, flinging the dividers aside, he spun around. The word "Bad wolf" was everywhere.

"So, I just met Rose Tyler? What has the Bad wolf got to do with anything?"

"It's the end of the universe," Sorley said. She could feel a headache pressing in her skull. She hurried after them, her hand pressing against the growing throbbing in her head.

The Doctor was already furiously pressing the buttons and levers when she entered. It felt like the world was spinning around her. It wasn't the Doctor's horrible driving. She felt queasy. The Doctor and Donna pushed passed her the moment the Doctor landed.

"How did I just meet Rose Tyler? She's locked away in a parallel world."

"Exactly. If she can cross from her parallel world to your parallel world, then that means the walls of the universe are breaking down. Which puts everything in danger, everything! But how!?" He dashed back into the Tardis.

"Look Doctor. No matter what's happening, and I'm- I'm sure it's bad, I get that. But… Rose is coming back. Isn't that good?"

He paused in his fiddling, glancing at Sorley. "Yeah," he said non-committedly.

The Tardis shook violently. Donna caught Sorley as she stumbled. "What the hell was that?"

The Doctor hesitated, deciding that whatever was going on outside was more important. Outside was the dark twilight that Sorley loved. "What happened outside?" Donna called out.

The Doctor ran back to the console, staring at the monitor. "We haven't moved, we're fixed… Can't have! No!"

He ran back to the door, his hands carding his hair. "The Tardis is in the same place. But the Earth is gone. The entire planet. It's gone."

The two companions joined the Doctor at the door. "Oh god."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

It was the darkness that greeted her first breath into the universe. She felt her conscious floating. They were calling her and she heeded the call. She was growing. She was more than what the other Tardis'. Her old or present owner knew her capabilities. Tenses are difficult when one see's all of time. She is here, she is there and she is in the future.

The timelines are shifting. She shifted them so subtly that not even her original owner realized it. None of her owners would realize it. She had calculated for error.

It would be disastrous if it failed. Time would unwrite itself.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"There were no readings. Nothing. Not a trace. Not even a whisper. Oh, that is fearsome technology," he turned and said to Donna.

Donna sunk so deep into the couch, her hands grasping her temples. "If the Earth's been moved, they've lost the sun! What about my Mum? And my Grandad? They're dead, aren't they? Are they dead?"

"I don't know. Donna, I just don't know. I'm sorry, I don't know…"

"That's my family. My whole world." Her hands trembled. Her eyes were dry when she looked up. "So what do we do?"

"We've got to get help."

"From where?"

"We're going to the Shadow Proclamation. Hold on!" He pulled the dematerialization lever. The Tardis groaned and trembled more violently than it usually did. He ran around the console flipping switches and pushing buttons, pushing the Tardis harder than he ever did when he was sober or not going through a bad regeneration. They propelled at an incredible speed towards the Shadow Proclamation, he had even taken off the speed limits. The Tardis would be unhappy but if he could save them, he would deal with an unhappy Tardis.

"So go on then, what is the Shadow Proclamation anyway?" Donna asked

"It's a posh name for the outer space police," Sorley replied.

"How did you know that?" The Doctor asked.

She shrugged. "Telly. I did watch the episode on Space rhinos and Martha. Oh I think I watched this one as well." Sorley looked thoughtfully. "They should be safe… mostly. It'd be a long day for us though."

The Doctor froze. He had forgotten about that. He had been meaning to talk about it to her. "This telly of yours. What did it say about this? How can we be on a telly in another universe? That's impossible."

"Why is it impossible?"

"Because Time Lords are multi-dimensional beings. There's only one copy of us existing in the whole entire space and time."

"You don't believe there's a possibility that there's an alternate universe out there that has you on the telly?"

"It's possible," he admitted. "But the possibility is so infinitesimally incalculable that it's impossible."

"Nothing is impossible. Just highly unlikely," Sorley pressed on.

He carded his hands through his hair in exasperation. "Look we can talk about this later.  _Assuming_  this  _show_  on the  _telly_  is correct, what did it show about this?"

She opened her mouth to respond. Sorley realized she wasn't sure how to skip through it without exposing any spoilers. There was that odd persistent, painful throbbing at the back of her head.

"Well it's the D-" A sharp spike of pain flashed through her head. She clutched her right head, gasping.

"It's what? What's wrong?" The Doctor asked. He pulled his sonic screwdriver out to scan her. The scans were normal but she was hanging off the railing, her face squinting in a grimace.

"It's the D-" Sorley staggered and fell to her knees. "D-" She gasped loudly. White and black spots flickered across her vision. The Tardis landed with a loud thud and she fell sideways into the Doctor's arms.

"What's wrong with her?" Donna asked.

"I don't know. The scans are normal. Can you stand?" He asked, gently pulling her up. Sorley nodded, not trusting herself to say anything. The pain was now rapidly fading to a dull throb. They stepped out of the Tardis. Quickly, they raised their hands at the sight of the guns pointed at them.

"Sco bo tro no flo jo ko fo. To to."

"No bo ho sho ko ro to so. Bo-ko-do-zo-go-bo-fo-po-jo." The Doctor replied. He mentally sighed in relief as he watched them lower their guns. "Mo ho."

"You weren't kidding about the space rhinos," Donna whispered to Sorley. Sorley merely smiled, rubbing her head.

They followed the Judoon into a room.

"Time Lords are the stuff of legend. They belong in the myths and whispers of the Higher Species. You cannot possibly exist." The pale lady said.

"Who's she?" Donna whispered to Sorley.

"Not sure." Sorley whispered back. "I'm not that big a fan to remember two minute characters."

The Doctor eyed them sternly. "Yeah, more to the point, I've got a missing planet!" he interjected before the duo could go into another ganging up against the Doctor routine. Sorley looked better now too, he noted.

"It's not 'A' planet," Sorley said.

"You are not as wise as the stories would say. The girl is right. The whole universe is in outrage, Doctor. 24 planets have been taken from the sky."

"Sorry. It's not 24 either."

"Who are you?" The pale lady asked.

"I'm human. It's 27 planets and who are you?"

"The Shadow Architect," she replied slightly miffed.

"There's Pyrovillia," Donna started.

"Pyrovillia is a cold case. Not relevant!" The Judoon scoffed.

"What do you mean cold case?" she asked.

"The planet Pyrovillia cannot be part of this. It disappeared over two thousand years ago."

"Yes, yes. Hang on… but there's the Adipose breeding planet too. Miss Foster said that that was lost, but that must've been a long time ago."

"That's it! Donna, brilliant!" The Doctor exclaimed. "Planets are being taken out of time as well as space… Let's put this into 3-D…"

He fiddled with the computer and the holograms of all the lost planets appeared floating in the room. "Now if we add Pyrovillia… And Adipose three… Something is missing. Where else, where else, where else… lost, lost, lost, lost… Oh! The lost moon of poosh."

The holograms suddenly moved and rearranged themselves. Sorley smiled. She remembered this part of the show. This arc had been one of her more favourite ones. That being said, she actually hadn't watched that much episodes to have much of it to base on.

"What did you do?" The Shadow architect asked.

"Nothing." He stared at them. "The planets rearranged themselves into the optimum pattern. Oh, look at that! Twenty-seven planets in perfect balance. Come on, that is gorgeous!"

"Oi, don't get all spaceman. What does it mean?" Donna asked, rather annoyed at him digressing.

"All those worlds fit together like pieces of an engine. It's like a powerhouse! What for?"

"Who could design such a thing?"

"Someone tried to move the Earth once before. Long time ago… can't be…" he muttered.

"Doctor…" Sorley started. "It's the D-" Pain shot through her like a needle. She slumped against Donna, breathing heavily. "It's like it doesn't want me to say it."

"Try spelling it or writing it," Donna suggested.

"D-" Pain shot through her again. Her breath came out in harsh stuttering gasps. The world was spinning around her as her heart leap erratically against her ribs. She grasped at her heart even as she reeled, her feet folding beneath her. Donna moved forward, catching her as she collapsed.

"What's wrong with the girl?" The Shadow architect asked.

"Not sure," he shrugged, scanning Sorley again. The scans were normal as they were the last time he scanned.

The Doctor wasn't sure if he could believe her in 'seeing the future'. Time sensitive humans were so rare. Of course assuming she could 'see the future' something must be stopping her for saying it. Assuming if that was true then why and how did they do it? He found he had no answers.

"Have you seen anything like that before?" Donna asked.

"Well…" he scratched his sideburn thoughtfully. "First time for everything. Bring her back to the med bay. I'll try and figure where the planets have gone to out here. There's nothing I can do for Sorley without a closer examination."

He looked back at the hologramic planets. Kneeling beside Sorley, he smoothed her hair. "Hold on. I'll solve this then I'll solve you."

Sorley grabbed his hand as it left her face. Her lips trembled as she tried to school the pain in her head.

"It's in Medusa Cascade." Sorley murmured too softly but the Doctor to pick. This time no pain occurred. "The planets are in Medusa Cascade. The bees were disappearing."

"How did-"

"Hurry! The D-" She gasped at the pain, gritting her teeth, Sorley forced herself to continue. "Are killing everyone."

The Doctor slung her arm across his shoulder, motioning Donna to follow. When they reached the console, he set Sorley down at the jump seat and hurried round the console, frantically flicking switches and pushing buttons. He even began instructing Donna to hold and press certain switches to speed up.

"What's killing the people. Who could design it?" The Doctor muttered. He grabbed Sorley as the Tardis jerked again.

"It's very bumpy! Can't you drive properly?" Donna hollered as they jerked even more than usual.

"It's the road!"

"The road?!"

"Some roads are paved and some aren't. We're taking the shortcut so it's not paved."

"Roads in Space?"

"Don't be daft Donna. It's an analogy and it's not space, it's the time vortex."

Donna gave him an odd look. "Ok we're here." The Tardis shuddered to a stop. "I came here when I was just a kid. Ninety years old. It was the centre of a rift in time and space…"

"So what now? Where are the 27 planets? What do we do?" Donna stared at Sorley with a frantic look. "Sorley? What do we do now?"

"We wait." Sorley replied.

"We wait?! Wait for what?"

"For who?" The Doctor motioned at the monitor. "There's nothing out there. Nothing!" He slammed his hand down on the console angrily. Donna's phone rang at that very moment.

"The phone!" The Doctor picked it up excitedly. "Martha is that you? It's a signal." He pulled out stethoscope and placed on it. He flicked the switches excitedly.

"Got it! I got a lock! Hold on!" They swayed, holding tightly onto the railings. The red lights blinked angrily and parts of the grating burst into flames. "We're travelling through time. One second in the future! The phone call's pulling us through!"

The shaking and rattling was starting to make Sorley feel ill. It felt like something was tapping dancing on her head and rolling in her stomach.

"Three! Two! One!" Suddenly the planets reappeared and the Tardis' jerking stopped.

"27 planets – and there's Earth! Why couldn't we see them?"

"The entire Medusa Cascade has been put a second out of sync with the rest of the universe. Perfect hiding place, tiny little pocket of time. But we found them! Oh, oh, what's that? Hold on, hold on, some sort of Subwave Network…"

"Move move!" Sorley pushed the two aside holding the fire extinguisher. She doused the flames as the Doctor pulled the signal up.

"Where the hell have you been?! Doctor, it's the Daleks!" Jack said.

Sorley tuned out, sitting by the stairs watching the duo jump for relief. Anytime now.

"No, no, no, no. There's another signal coming through, there's someone else out there…" The Doctor whacked the top of the monitor. "Can you hear me?" He glanced at Sorley who sat just out of view from the cam. She had been right. Could she really be Time sensitive? Why didn't she show signs of it earlier?

"Rose?" he said hopefully, disappointed when he saw Sorley shake her head.

"Your voice is different. And yet, its arrogance is unchanged." The Doctor froze as he recognized the voice. He gripped Donna's hand. "Welcome to my new Empire, Doctor. It is only fitting that you should bear witness to the resurrection, and the triumph, of Davros. Lord and creator of the Dalek race!"

"Doctor?" Donna said, her tone worried.

"Have you nothing to say?" Davros taunted.

"Doctor, it's all right. We're… we're in the Tardis. We're safe." She comforted.

"But you were destroyed. In the very first year of the Time War. At the Gate of Elysium. I saw your command ship fly into the jaws of the Nightmare Child. I tried to save you."

"But it took one stronger than you. Dalek Caan himself." Sorley could hear the condescending tone in Davros voice.

"I flew into the wild and fire, I dance and died a thousand times." Dalek Caan mocked in a sing-song voice.

"Emergency Temporal Shift took him back into the Time War itself."

"But that's impossible! The entire war is timelocked!"

"And yet he succeeded. Oh, it cost him his mind. But imagine, a single simple Dalek succeeded where Emperors and Time Lords have failed. A testament, don't you think? To my remarkable creations?" Davros smirked.

"And you made a new race of Daleks?"

"I gave myself to them. Quite literally. Each one grown from a cell of my body." He pulled his tunic open. All they see was the rotting flesh hanging off the ribs and heart beating in plain sight. Sorley shuddered, shaking her head away from it. "New Daleks, True Daleks. I have my children, Doctor. What do you have now?"

"After all this time. Everything we saw… everything we lost.. I have only one thing to say to you…" his lip trembled as he pulled control to his emotions. "Bye!" He pulled the lever sending the Tardis to Earth.

The Doctor turned to Sorley. "Is there anything you can tell me?"

She bit her lip.  _Okay let's see how far it lets me tell ahead._  "Ghost town. Rose. Dalek. Jack. Death. Reg-" If the other times were painful, this one took the cake. She convulsed onto the floor. Every nerve felt like it was on fire. The sounds were jingling jangling in her head. Loud painful noises. It felt like her throat was closing up on her, like fire burning in her limbs.

"Sorley? Sorley?! Breathe!" She could hear the Doctor call out dimly.

He laid her down on the ground before leaping to run to the med bay. He hurried back to her side, lifted a handful of salt under her nose. "Breathe Sorley! Breathe deeply!"

She fought for breath, warm salty tears streamed down her face. Her hands hung on tightly onto Donna, marking tiny white crescent moons on her arms. Then she relaxed, she stopped heaving for air, her body stopped trembling.

"You're okay." He hugged her tightly. "Okay. No more." He rubbed circles on her back.

"Doctor, be careful. T-"

"No more. No more Sorley." He interrupted sternly. "When this is all over, we're going to talk about this telly show. Understood? I'll fix this."

She nodded then glanced at the door. "We've landed Doctor."

They turned to the door. "What's out there?" Donna asked.

"I don't know. But she said Ghost town. Rose," The Doctor flickered a look back at Sorley. "Dalek. Death. I hope it's the Dalek that's dying if that's what death is referred to." He pulled his sonic screwdriver out as he stepped out of the Tardis. He didn't dare to ask her again. He wasn't sure what had trigger the episode but he wasn't going to risk it.

"Donna, stay in here with Sorley. You'll be safe in here." He pulled the door wider so Donna could take a look from the steps. "Sure is a ghost town here."

"Sarah Jane said they were taking the people. What for? Think. Donna when you met Rose in that parallel world, what did she say?"

"Just… the darkness is coming."

"Anything else?" he asked. "There has to be-" He stopped in his sentence. The figure on the other end of the street. It couldn't be anyone else but her. That blond hair that he missed so much, he couldn't, he wouldn't have believed it if it had not been Sorley who said it earlier. He ran to her, his mind oblivious to everything else but each other.

"EXTERMINATE!" The Dalek cried out.

He turned, a moment too slow, a moment too late in remembering Sorley's warning. He fell to the ground. Rose knelt down beside him, cradling his head in her hands.

"I've got you, it missed you. Look. It's me. Doctor."

He smiled. "Rose… Long time no see."

"Yeah, been busy. Y'know," she smiled bravely.

"She was right…" he half laughed, half convulsed in pain.

"Don't die. Oh my god. Don't die. Don't die…" Rose wept.

"Get him into the Tardis. Quick! Move!" Jack ordered. He picked up Rose's gun and covered the way back to the Tardis.

Sorley had almost fallen asleep against Donna's shoulder when they burst in. "Oh my god! What happened?!" Donna stood up so swiftly that Sorley nearly fell to the ground.

"The Dalek shot him. He's dying." Jack replied. He slammed the doors shut and placed the guns on the jump seat.

"Just step back Rose. Do as I say and get back! He's dying and you know what happens next." Jack ordered.

"There must be some medicine to save him!" Donna cried out almost hysterical.

"Oh no, I came all this way," Rose cried.

"It's starting…" The Doctor held his hand out. The hand began to glow with regeneration energy. Rose moved back reluctantly, allowing herself to be pulled into a hug.

"Will someone please tell me what's going on?!" Donna exclaimed.

"When he's dying, his body… it-it repairs itself. It changes." Rose stammered. "But you can't!" She cried out desperately.

"I'm sorry. It's too late. I'm regenerating!"

He threw his arms out wide. The energy burst out of his skin, through the sleeves and the neck of his suits, blinding the occupants. They squeezed their eyes tightly as they waited for it to be over. Then instead of changing into another man, he diverted the energy towards the hand in the jar, making it glow and bubble wildly. The light faded and he stumbled towards the coral beams, clutching it.

"What happened?" Donna asked. The trio stood there staring at the Doctor in disbelief. Only Sorley had already known what was going to happen.

"He used his energy to heal himself," Sorley offered. "Then diverted the excess away."

Jack and Rose turned to her with an incredulous look. "How did you know that?" Rose asked.

"It's Sorley. She knows everything," Jack said.

The Doctor arched an eyebrow at that statement. "Well after I healed myself, I didn't need to change. I didn't want to. Why would I?" He adjusted his tie and looked smugly at them. "Look at me! So, to stop the energy going all the way, I siphoned off the rest into a handy bio-matching receptable, namely, my hand. My hand, there, my handy spare hand!" He leaned down, inspecting the jar and blew on it. The glow faded and the bubbling stopped.

He stood up. "Remember? Christmas Day? Sycorax? Lost my hand in a sword fight? That's my hand. What d'you think?"

Rose shifted her attention from the hand to him. Hesitating, she stepped towards. "You're still you?" She asked. He nodded with a smile and threw his arms around her.

Sorley watched them from her spot on the steps. All the pain she had felt today had drained her energy away, she was so tired. She blinked, just realizing that Jack had squatted in front of her and was holding her hand. He seemed to be talking, but it felt like her mind wasn't processing anything.

"Tired," she mumbled. She allowed Jack to put an arm around her mostly because her eyes felt so heavy. So very heavy. He said something; she felt his chest vibrate the way people's chest did when they were talking but she had fallen asleep by then.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"You're okay," Jack rubbed comforting circles on her back. The Doctor hurried about the console, demanding more information from Rose. This was the Doctor who still didn't know. Jack couldn't fault him. All this time travelling, sometimes he hated it when he couldn't tell someone because it was in their future.

He gripped tightly on Sorley as the Tardis jerked again. A red dot on the monitor flashed in time with the beeping.

"THE TARDIS IS SECURED." It was the voice of a Dalek. The Doctor stepped forward towards the walkway. Terror froze on his face.

"DOCTOR YOU WILL STEP FORTH OR DIE."

"We'll have to go out. Cause if we don't, they'll get in," the Doctor said.

"You told me nothing could get through those doors."

"What do you mean?" Jack asked. "You got extrapolator shielding."

"Last time we fought the Daleks, they were scavengers and hybrids and mad. But this is a fully-fledged Dalek Empire, at the height of its power. Experts at fighting Tardises. They can do anything. Right now, that wooden door… is just wood." The Doctor turned to look at the door.

"Donna?" The Doctor gently jerked Donna out of her trance.

"Yeah."

"Sorry, there's nothing else we can do." The Doctor said.

The three of them laughed nervously. "It's been good, though. Hasn't it? All of us, all of it. Everything we did." The Doctor looked at Donna. "You were brilliant." She smiled back.

"And you were brilliant." He said to Jack who grinned back.

"And you were brilliant." This time to Rose who only smiled back sadly.

"And she was brilliant." The Doctor said with a faint smile on his face as he gazed at Sorley. "She tried to warn us, didn't she? Said death." He glanced at Donna who shrugged.

"Sorley?" Jack shook Sorley.

Sorley shuddered. She clutched tightly onto Jack's arm. "Sorley?" he asked softly.

"It hurts." She mumbled. She stared at Jack unseeingly. "It hurts." Tears streamed down her face, her grip was bruisingly tight. She jerked uncontrollably. Jack couldn't tell if she had been conscious or was conscious. She wasn't responding to anything and that worried him a great deal.

"What's wrong with her?" Rose asked. She watched Sorley whimper and moan, convulsing in Jack's arms.

"Come on Sorley, just hold on." Jack muttered, planting a kiss on her temple.

"We have to go out." The Doctor looked torn between carrying Sorley and going out knowing he had to be ready for anything out there. The two men exchanged a brief look and Jack nodded in acknowledgement.

"Blimey." The Doctor said. Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the crucible. Jack adjusted Sorley and carried her bridal style out of the Tardis, following the Doctor. Rose following as well with Donna lagging behind.

"DALEKS REIGN SUPREME! ALL HAIL THE DALEKS!" The room full of Daleks chanted.

"Donna?" The Doctor hurried back to the Tardis and rattled the door. "It's no safer in there…"

Suddenly the doors slammed shut on the Tardis. "Doctor? What have you done?" Donna banged on the door.

"It wasn't me! I didn't do anything!"

"Oi! I'm not staying behind!"

"What did you do?" He spun around angrily at the superior Dalek and shouted at it.

"This is not of Dalek origin." It replied.

Donna banged harder on the door, yelling at him to let her out. "Doctor!"

"Stop it! She's my friend. Now open the door and let her out," he ordered.

"This is Time Lord Treachery!"

"Me? The door just closed on its own!"

"Nevertheless, the Tardis is a weapon and it will be destroyed." A trapdoor opens beneath the Tardis and it falls down.

"What are you doing? Bring it back!" He demanded. "What've you done? Where's it going?"

"The Crucible has a heart of Z-Neutrino Energy. The Tardis will be deposited into the core."

"But you can't! You've taken the defences down." He turned to the trapdoor horrified. "It'll be torn apart!"

"But Donna's still in there!" Rose exclaimed.

"The female and the Tardis will perish together! Observe." A holographic screen appeared, showing the Tardis bobbing in the energy field.

Sorley began crying out in pain. Jack hugged her tightly. He had seen her in the future; she would have survived this in order for the future to happen that what he told himself. Somewhere inside him, he knew that it was possible for time to be rewritten. He cradled her, speaking soothing words to her.

"Please, I'm begging you. I'll do anything! Put me in her place, you can do anything to me. I don't care, just get her out of there!"

"You'll be alright Sorley." Jack murmured. She shuddered, her eyes rolling back and then she went limp. "Come on Sorley." He cradled her.

The Doctor watched the Tardis burn in horror, the last link to his home disappearing the in a ball of flames. His companion, his unofficial best friend disappearing along with it. There was sense of hollowness in him. The Tardis that comforted him at the ends of the war and soothed his nightmares with the song that could only be described as the song of the Tardis, all gone.

"You are connected to the Tardis. Now feel it die."

"Total Tardis destruction in ten rels, nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two! One!" The Tardis disappeared.

"The Tardis has been destroyed. Now tell me, Doctor. What do you feel? Anger? Sorrow? Despair?"

He just continued watching. "Yeah." He whispered.

"Then if emotions are so important, surely we have enhanced you?"

Jack smoothed Sorley's hair out. He thrust her limp body into the Doctor's arms. "Yeah? Feel this!" Jack dashed towards the dalek and starting shooting at it. The bullets bounced off its shell, something he knew that would already happen.

"EXTERMINATE!" The dalek shot him back. Jack collapsed to the ground as he died. In an instant, Rose knelt beside him, shaking him.

"Jack! Oh, my god! Oh, no!"

The Doctor shifted his grip on Sorley, he squeezed Rose's shoulder. "Rose, come here. Leave him."

"They killed him!" She clutched his body.

"I know. I'm sorry. There's nothing we can do."

Rose stood up, her fingers trembled. She had expected the Doctor to say something more. Jack was his companion and he just died. Why did the Doctor just brush it off like that. She looked at him, then at the girl in his arms. There was a deep furrow on his forehead and sorrow in his eyes. He knew that right now he had to keep them alive. The Doctor would probably let himself feel it later, but now he had everything contained inside him so he could focus. It was so like him. Rose squeezed his arm before dropping it. She flickered a glance at Jack as though to memorize his face before following the Dalek to wherever it was bringing them to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awkward ending, I know. I did actually want to push it through and finish it in this chapter but 10k words? Meh. Who wants to read so much in a chapter? Too much scrolling. So I spilt it up to the next 'best' part. Aka here. So I finally figured why I don't like writing canon chapters. Too much dialogue. I always wanted a Jack x OC. You think it could be Jack x Sorley? Haha! Please comment! Comments make me very happy. :)


	9. Journey's End

"Activate of the holding cells. Excellent. Even when powerless, a Time Lord is best contained."

Doctor lay Sorley's head against his shoulder. Though unconscious Sorley was sweating profusely, he placed his cool hand on her forehead. Things looked bleaker than it did before. Even during the Time War, even when he was captured, he found it was always possible to escape. The Doctor wondered if it was because then he didn't hold importance to life as much as now. He had Rose, he had Donna. He looked down at the unconscious girl that he had unintentionally taken from her universe. He had Sorley. He promised to keep them safe. Even though with all the adventures they had, he had every intention of keeping his promise even if it meant his life. He was no one of consequence, but they were everything he had and treasured.

"Still scared of me, then?" He growled. Oh he had realized it alright. At the moment when Jack ran out to kill himself to give them a chance of escaping, he had realized it. The Tardis wasn't gone. He was linked to it, he would have felt it. Something had happened. He didn't know what, but he knew he had to buy time. Buy time. It's funny how that he as a time traveller would even need to  _buy time._

"It is time we talked, Doctor. After so very long."

The Doctor touched the edge of the holding cell, testing the type it was. It rippled with blue light, feeding back a small electric shock to him. It was an energy conduit. He hadn't seen it for ages. In fact not since, well… the last time he was stuck on a Dalek ship which was during the Time war. It was a type of holding cell that was oddly easy enough to escape if he had a mirror. Not difficult at all. Except he wasn't here to escape, he was here to stop the Daleks from doing whatever they had in plan. The Doctor glanced at Rose who stared back with fear in her eyes. He wished he could hold her hand and reassure her that everything would be fine even if might not be true. He pursed his lips, turning back to the Davros that had moved up towards him.

"No no no no no, we're not doing the nostalgia tour. I wanna know what's happening, right here, right now. Cause the Supreme Dalek said Vault, yeah?" He motioned at his surroundings with a smirk. "As in dungeon? Cellar? Prison? You're not in charge of the Daleks, are you? They've got you locked away down here in the basement like, what? A servant? Slave? Court jester?"

He knew Davros wasn't exactly pleased with whatever he had here. If he could only provoke Davros, it was a long shot just like any other plans would be now.

"We have… an arrangement."

"No no no no, I've got the word. You're the Dalek's pet!" he mocked. He laughed once, a single, hard mirthless sound.

"So very full of fire, is he not? And to think you crossed entire universes, striding parallel to parallel to find him again." Davros said.

The Doctor's eyes darkened like the skies before a storm, watch Davros move to Rose. Had he mis-gauged the Dalek? He mentally swore. "Leave her alone."

"She is mine. To do as I please."

"Then why am I still alive?" Rose asked. Her voice was empty of the fear that lurked in her eyes. Brilliant, brave rose. The Doctor unclenched the grip he had unconsciously had on Sorley.

"You must be here. It was foretold. Even the Supreme Dalek would not dare to contradict the prophecies of Dalek Caan."

They turned to look at Dalek Caan. "So cold and dark, fire is coming, the endless flames." It sang.

"What is that thing?" Rose asked with disgust.

"You've met before. The last of the Cult of Skaro. But it flew into the Time War, unprotected." The Doctor replied.

"Caan did more than that. He saw time, its infinite complexity and majesty, raging through his mind. And he saw you. All three of you."

"This I have foreseen, in the wild, and the wind. The Doctor will be here, as witness. At the end of everything. The Doctor and his precious Children of Time," it giggled hysterically.

"Was it you, Caan? Did you kill Donna? Why did the Tardis door close? Tell me!" He shouted. Anger rolled off him in a palpable wave.

"Oh, that's it! The anger. The fire. The rage of a Time Lord who butchered millions. There he is! Why so shy? Show your companion. Show her your true self. Dalek Caan has promised me that, too."

"I have seen. At the time of ending, the Doctor's soul will be revealed," Dalek Caan agreed.

"What does that mean?" The Doctor asked, almost fearful of the answer. He was trapped in this cell, no Tardis, no way of taking down all the Daleks. He looked at Rose who looked at him to save her, to save them, to save the world.

"We will discover it together. Our final journey. Because the ending approaches, the testing begins," Davros calmly said.

"Testing of what?"

"The Reality Bomb."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The Moment is coming.

The Moment knew how special she was. Even before her thief had opened her up, the Moment had seen her for what she really was. She was not one of a kind, but the only one that could truly transcend all that she was to become all that she could be.

There were many like her. Many could-have-been. The Moment came. The Moment gave her all that she needed to be the thing that she could be. Something uniquely different from all could-have-beens; her consciousness compressing into a singular regularity, surpassing an eleven dimension being.

Was she compressing or expanding? She found it was difficult to put these explanations into something easier to comprehend. Compressing herself to expand further out. Did that make sense? She was changing. She had changed the moment she met the Moment. The Moment was never coming.

The Moment is here.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Sorley shot upright with a gasp. Only the hand at her waist pulled her back before she slammed into the edge of the solid light. She looked up. The light was solid. How was light, solid? She touched it tentatively, causing blue ripples spark across the solid light.

"An energy conduit," she mumbled. Her hand reached to her head unconsciously as she tried to process the information that seemed to soar in her mind.

The Doctor was startled when she woke up so suddenly. He had been so focused in horror at Martha then Jack and Sarah Jane that he had forgotten about Sorley leaning against him. He was even more startled that she had known exactly what it was.

"The final prophecy is in place. The Doctor and his children, all gathered as witnesses. Supreme Dalek, the time has come! Now… detonate the Reality Bomb!" Davros commanded.

"Ok ok. Where are we?" Sorley murmured. She looked around. The sight of the Doctor's old companions kneeling on the floor with their hands against their heads. "I got this."

"ACTIVATE PLANETARY ALIGNMENT FIELD!" Supreme Dalek ordered. "UNIVERSAL REALITY DETONATION IN 200 RELS."

The Doctor got up. "You can't. Davros. Just listen to me! Just stop!" He said, begging desperately.

"Nothing can stop the detonation, nothing and no one!" Davros crackled.

"Wanna bet?" Sorley shouted gleefully, climbing to her feet. She was burning. Burning with power, so much power that she felt she could soar over buildings.

"Sorley? What are you doing?" The Doctor asked.

"Again with the doubtful tone," Sorley mocked. Oh. She really didn't feel like herself. She wasn't herself. She looked down at her glowing hands. "I'm not myself, am I?" she mused. She held out her hand to the holding cell, reversing the energy conduit back to its source. The solid light flickered and splintered into tiny pieces.

"S-Sorley?" The Doctor called out in surprise.

"That's my girl," Jack whooped from the back of the room.

"Now would be a good time. Really!" Sorley said. She turned her head to the back of the room, staring pass everyone to a vacant spot. The sound of the handbrakes filled the air as the blue box materialised in the Vault.

"But that's…" The Doctor ran his hands through his hair with a look of disbelief. He watched the box and then Sorley. How did she know?

"Impossible!" Davros yelled.

"Nothing is impossible. Just highly unlikely," Sorley chuckled.

The door swung open and the Doctor, the Metacrisis Doctor sprinted out with a device in his hand.

"Don't!" The Doctor shouted in panic. His mind quickly assembling all the possibilities that this other Doctor could have created and done. Davros zapped him before the Metacrisis Doctor could do anything.

"Activate holding cell." The solid light appeared around the Doctor, Sorley and the Metacrisis Doctor.

Sorley looked at it and scoffed. "Really? I just broke the other cell and you think putting a new one around me is going to change anything?" She paused. "Oh, this is not my time yet." Sorley nodded sagely. "Carry on."

"What?" The Metacrisis Doctor looked at her baffled with her sudden speech.

Amidst the Sorley's speech, Donna had snuck out and picked up the weapon. "Doctor, I got it! But I don't know what to do!" She cried out. Davros zapped her as well and she flew, slamming into a control panel thing.

"Donna! Donna! Are you all right? Donna?" The Doctor banged against the new holding cell, his hands searching his pocket for a mirror to free himself.

"Destroy the weapon," Davros said. The weapon exploded from one of the Dalek's death ray. "I was wrong about your warriors, Doctor. They're pathetic!"

"How come there's two of you?" Rose asked, shocked at the sight of two Doctor.

"Human biological metacrisis. Never mind that, now we got no way of stopping the Reality Bomb!" The Doctor looked at Sorley who stood with folded arms in her cell looking exceedingly calm. Sorley wasn't herself. She wouldn't be so calm if she were.

"DETONATION IN 20 RELS… 19…"

"Stand witness, Time Lord! Stand witness, humans! Your strategies have failed. Your weapons are useless. And, oh. The end of the universe has come." Davros taunted.

"Oops, sorry!" Sorley said, unfolding her arms. "That's my cue!" She chirped and shattered the light cell.

"…NINE… EIGHT…"

She moved a step towards Davros who tried to zap her. She batted the electric away as though it was a fly. She leaned down to his ear and whispered so softly that only he could hear. "You were a mere fly in the web of Time. A mere fourth dimension being. Do you really think someone, something that saw all of time and space would help you?" She laid a simple hand down on his metal armor. It sparked. She moved back, gazing at Dalek Caan who gazed back at her with a seemingly understanding look.

"…TWO… ONE…"

"Oh… closing all Z-Neutrino relay loops using an internalised synchronous back-feed reversal loop?" Came a voice from the back. Donna stood there looking confident, mocking and every inch sounding like the Doctor. She flicked a switch with a smug smile. "That button there!"

"DETONATION NEGATIVE!" One of the Daleks cried out.

"EXPLAIN! EXPLAIN! EXPLAIN!" The Supreme Dalek demanded.

"Donna, you can't even change a plug!" The Doctor exclaimed.

Donna smirked. "D'you wanna bet, Time Boy?"

"You'll suffer for this!" Davros lifted his hand to zap her but the blue sparking that started when Sorley touched his metal armour engulfed his armour, shocking him.

"What did you do?" The Doctor asked to Sorley as she moved to break his cell.

"Just a simple bio-electric dampening field with a retrogressive arc inversion. He wouldn't hurt unless he tried to shoot someone or something." She shrugged, breaking the Metacrisis Doctor's cell.

"EXTERMINATE HER! EXTERMINATE BOTH OF THEM!"

The Doctor pushed Sorley behind him while the Metacrisis Doctor skidded to Donna.

"WEAPONS NON-FUNCTIONAL!"

Donna barely reacted to their wailing. "Don't be so childish. It's just a macrotransmission of a K-filter wavelength blocking Dalek weaponry in a self-replicating energy blindfold matrix."

"How d'you work that out? You…" The Doctor asked amazed.

"Time Lord! Part Time Lord!" Metacrisis Doctor replied excitedly.

"Part human! Oh, yes! That was a two-way biological metacrisis. Half Doctor, half Donna!" Donna added.

"The Doctor-Donna! Just like the Ood said, remember? They saw it coming! The Doctor-Donna!" The Doctor muttered in realisation.

"Sealed the Vaults," Sorley said, moving to beside the Metacrisis Doctor and Donna.

"Stop them! Get them away from the controls!"

Donna flicked another switch and turned a dial. "Aaaand spin." Donna drawled, looking amused. Jack laughed, causing the whole group of them giggle along at the sight of the Daleks spinning helplessly.

"And… the other way!" She sang, spinning the dial the other way, sending the Daleks spinning the other way.

"What did you do?" The Metacrisis Doctor looked at her incredulously.

"Trip-stitch circuit-breaker in the psycho-kinetic threshold manipulator!"

"But that's brilliant!"

"Why did we never think of that?" The Doctor asked in awe.

"Hah! Because you two, you were just Time Lords, you dumbos! Lacking that little bit of human, that gut instinct that comes hand in hand with Planet Earth. I can think of ideas you two wouldn't dream of in a million years! Ah, the universe has been waiting for me! Now… let's send that trip-stitch all over the ship! Did I ever tell you?" she wiggled her hands eagerly. "Best temp in Chiswick, hundred words per minute!"

"Ha!" The Metacrisis Doctor laughed. The Daleks around the Supreme Dalek spun uncontrollably.

Jack ran passed them and into the Tardis. He ran out with the guns, chucking one at Mickey.

"Come on then, boys. We've got 27 planets to send home! Activate Magnetron!"

"Stop this at once!" Davros moved towards them. Sorley stopped in front of the control panel.

"I warned you Davros," Sorley said. Her voice was colder than anything the Doctor had ever heard from her. "Did you really think we could have done everything here by ourselves?"

"Move back! Stay where you are, mister," Mickey said, moving in front of Sorley.

"Don't bother Mickey. He can't do anything." She smiled smugly. Davros tried to zap her again, yet again suffered from the energy feeding back that Sorley had placed on him earlier. "He's pathetic."

Davros turned to Dalek Caan in horror. "Dalek Caan! Why did you not foresee this?"

"Oh, I think he did. Something's been manipulating the timelines for ages. Getting Donna Noble and Sorley to the right place at the right time." The Doctor replied.

"This would always have happened. I only helped, Doctor, Sorley." Dalek Caan giggled.

"You betrayed the Daleks!" Davros cried out.

"Remember what I said, Davros." Sorley looked at Dalek Caan.

"I saw the Daleks. What we have done, throughout time and space. I saw the truth of us, Creator, and I decreed…"

"No More!" Dalek Caan and Sorley shouted together.

"Heads up!" Sorley called out, seeing the Supreme Dalek descend.

"DAVROS! YOU HAVE BETRAYED US!" Supreme Dalek screeched, shooting at the control panel.

"Like I was saying. Feel this!" Jack blasted the Supreme Dalek into half before it could do anything else. The Doctor examined the control panel.

"Oh, we've lost the Magnetron! And there's only one planet left – guess which one? But we can use the Tardis…"

He dashed inside while the new Doctor flicked the switches on the remains of the control panel. "Holding Earth's stability! Maintaining atmospheric shell." The Metacrisis Doctor called out.

"The prophecy must complete." Dalek Caan told them, though it seemed more directed to Sorley. Sorley gave an indiscernible nod.

"Don't listen to him!" Davros interjected.

"I have seen the end of everything Dalek, and you must make it happen, Doctor!"

The Metacrisis Doctor looked thoughtful at its words. Sorley turned, squeezing his shoulder in comfort.

"He's right. Cos with or without a Reality Bomb, this Dalek Empire is big enough to slaughter the cosmos… They've got to be stopped!" he said mournfully.

"Just – just wait for the Doctor!" Donna argued.

"Don't worry," Sorley calmly explained. "He'll destroy all the Daleks. The entire Dalek empire, but not all of it." She pressed her lips together, trying to find the proper words. "Just the present ones."

Sorley shrugged at Donna's and the Metacrisis Doctor's raised eyebrows. "Look. Whatever you're doing. It's all part of the prophecy. It's a fixed point. You'll only destroy the present, there'll be future ones. The Daleks are a fixed point in time. They'll always come back." She hugged him. "Don't feel guilty. Just don't… tell the other Doctor about what I said. It's a point of time that's yet to come."

They nodded. The Metacrisis took a deep breath and with a regretful look, he worked the controls. "Maximising Dalekanium power feeds! Blasting them back!"

The Daleks began exploding one by one. The power of it shaking the whole Crucible including the Tardis. The Doctor ran out of the Tardis, looking upon the destruction in horror. "What have you done?"

"Fulfilling the prophecy," The Metacrisis Doctor coldly replied, his hand finding strength from Sorley's.

The Doctor chased them into the Tardis angrily. Inside the console room, the console room was full with all the Doctor's friends. "And… off we go!" The Doctor said pulling the lever. The Tardis shook violently as the Crucible exploded.

"But what about the Earth? Its stuck in the wrong part of space!" Sarah Jane asked.

"I'm on it," the Doctor said as he watched the monitor. "Torchwood hub! This is the Doctor! Are you receiving me?"

"Loud and Clear! Is Jack there?" Ianto replied.

"Can't get rid of him!" They laughed. "Now Torchwood, I want you to open up that Rift Manipulator. Send all the power to me."

"Doing it now, Sir!"

"What's that for?" Sarah Jane asked. "It's a tow-rope. Now then what's your son's name?"

"Luke, he's called Luke. And the computer's called Mr Smith." She answered excitedly.

"Calling Luke and Mr Smith! This is the Doctor. Come on Luke, shake your leg!"

"Is Mum there?" Luke asked anxiously.

"Oh, she's fine and dandy…" Doctor laughed. "Now Mr Smith, I want you to harness the rift power and loop it around the Tardis, you got that?"

"I regret, I will need remote access to the Tardis base code numerals."

"Oh blimey, that's gonna take awhile," he groaned.

"No no, let me!" Sarah Jane around the monitor. "K9! Out you come!"

"Affirmative, Mistress." K-9 appeared beside Luke.

"Oh, good dog! K-9, give Mr Smith the base code!"

"Master! Tardis base code now being transferred. The process is simple!"

Leaving the dog to do its job, the Doctor moved about the console instructing his friends what to do now that he couldn't run about the console when there were so many people around it. Not that he wanted to do so anyway, it was just something he was used to having piloted the Tardis solo for over eight hundred years.

"You know why this Tardis always is always rattling about the place? Rose, that, there. It's designed to have six pilots and I had to do it single handed. Martha, keep that level. But not anymore! Jack, there you go, steady that. Now we can fly this thing… No, Jackie, no no, not you. Don't touch anything. Just… stand back with Sorley." He gently pushed Jackie to beside Sorley who was sitting on the railings.

"Like its meant to be flown! We've got the Torchwood Rift looped around the Tardis by Mr Smith, and we're gonna fly planet Earth back home!" The Doctor moved a spot, right beside the lever. "Right then! Off we go!"

He pulled the lever and the Tardis started to move. Sorley smiled, watching them with occasional instructions from Doctor-Donna, Metacrisis Doctor and the Doctor himself.

"So what happened to her and him?" Rose asked motioning her eyebrows at Donna and Metacrisis Doctor.

"Oh. He poured all his regeneration energy into his spare hand, I touched the hand and then he grew out of that but that fed back into me." Donna motioned, still keeping one hand on navigational gravitic stabilizers. "But it just stayed dormant in my head till the synapses got that little extra spark, kicking into life. Which was from that zap that Davros. Part human… part Time Lord. And I got the best bit of the Doctor. I got his mind!"

"So there's three of you?" Sarah Jane asked.

"Three Doctors?" Rose repeated as though to verify what she just heard.

"I can't tell you what I'm thinking right now." Jack grinned.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

They landed in a park, those that were leaving begun giving hugs and goodbyes to each other. Sorley stood beside the Metacrisis Doctor and Donna in the console room, holding their hands tightly. Eventually it was just Metacrisis Doctor and her left standing in a corner. She looked at him with a sad look.

"What are you?" he asked.

Sorley smiled. "I'm Sorley Morin. Well this body is, but I'm currently not her. It's complicated."

"You know what's going to happen?"

She nods. "It might be hard for you." Sorley reached over and laid a hand on his arm. She had a faraway look, searching for the right words. "You won't be alone. Not for long. You'll be happy."

He nodded. "Does he know?" he quirked an eyebrow to the Doctor who was standing outside the door giving each of his old companions a goodbye.

"Not yet. Not soon. The time isn't right yet."

Jack coughed loudly. "Sorry, I've got to go, just need to." He motioned to Sorley.

"Right." The Metacrisis Doctor agreed and moved aside to let him have a private goodbye.

"Hey Sweetheart," Jack beamed. He leaned closer to her and she raised an eyebrow at his nickname for her. "Come on. Let me talk to Sorley for a bit before I gotta dash. You know what I mean…"

She blinked. "It's not time for her to come back. There's something else I need to do before I go."

"Okay," he sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "I'll see you when I see you then." She nodded and he smiled before leaning over to give her a peck on the lips. She raised a hand to smack him but he dodged it, giving her a salute as he popped out of the doors.

"You two…?" Metacrisis Doctor gestured at Jack then at Sorley.

"He kisses everyone." Sorley answered.

"With that adoring puppy dog eyes?" Sorley rolled her eyes at him. "Nothing wrong with him… he's… wrong."

"You're just time-prejudiced."

"Is there even such a word?"

"There is now." Sorley laughed.

"Time for one last trip." The Doctor announced, slamming the doors behind him. "Darlig Ulv Stranden. Better known… Bad Wolf Bay."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"Ugh, fat lot of good this is! Back of beyond. Bloody Norway! I'm going have to phone your father, he's on the nursery run."

Rose turned around to the Doctor with a confused look. "Hold on, this is… the parallel universe, right?"

"You're back home," The Doctor told her.

"And the walls of the world are closing again, now that the Reality Bomb never happened. It's dimensional retroclosure. See, I really get that stuff now." Donna said.

"No, but… I spent all that time trying to find you. I'm not going back now!"

"But you got to. Cos we saved the universe, but at a cost." He looked at the Metacrisis Doctor. "And the cost is him. He destroyed the Daleks. He committed genocide. He's too dangerous to be left on his own."

"You made me!" he asserted not really putting effort to object. The words that Sorley said resounded in his head, easing some of that guilt that was crawling in.

"Exactly. You were born in battle, full of blood and anger and revenge." The Doctor looked at Rose. "Remind you of someone? That's me, when we first met. And you made me better. Now you can do the same for him."

"Are you leaving me for her?" Rose pointed at Sorley who had been standing by the doors watching. She had seen the way the Doctor looked at her and the way he cared for her in the vault.

"Her?" The Doctor turned to see who she was pointing at. "Er. Nope. Definitely not. Sorley's just a friend."

So he hadn't realised it yet. Rose looked at the girl.

"But it's better than that, though. Don't you see what he's trying to give you?" Donna said to the Metacrisis Doctor. "Tell her, go on."

"I look like him, I think like him, same memories, same thoughts, same everything. Except I've only got one heart."

"Which means?"

"I'm part human. Specifically, the aging part. I'll grow old and never regenerate. I've only got one life… Rose Tyler. I could spend it with you. If you want."

"You'll grow – grow old… at the same time as me?"

"Together," the Metacrisis Doctor affirmed. Rose moved to touch his heart, the single heart thumping in his chest.

"Hold on," Sorley said as Donna and the Doctor stepped back. She stood close to Rose and the Metacrisis Doctor, handing a piece of rock to them. "A chunk of Tardis. Grow your own." She smiled. "At a certain point, you'll find that you two will age slower than everyone else and you'll need it."

"But that takes thousands of years!" The Metacrisis Doctor said, looking at it.

"Not if you shatterfry the plasmic shell then modify the dimensional stabiliser to a foldback harmonic of 36.3, you accelerate the growth by the power of 59," Sorley said.

"How?" He gaped, opening and closing his mouth, unable to find a proper response.

"When you figure what I am, you'll understand how," she said with a wink. Pressing a finger on her lips, she pointed at the coral. The Metacrisis Doctor pocketed it. "And really, Rose. Don't use the Dimension Cannon anymore. Lock it up and throw the key away. The dimension cannon smashes itself against the walls of the universe until it breaks and then it suddenly starts working. I'm not saying it was the entire cause of this whole dimension collapsing. I'm just saying it had a participating factor in it."

Rose gaped at her. "I didn't… know…"

"That's alright. You got him now." Sorley thumbed at the Metacrisis Doctor and moved back to her place by the doors.

"Take care of him," Rose whispered, catching Sorley's hand just as she moved too far back. Sorley smiled.

"But… what about you?" Rose turned to face the Doctor.

"Oh. I got them," he jerked his thumb at the Donna and Sorley. "They're always ganging up on me. Donna and Sorley, the troublemakers," His expression slipped a bit as he said Donna's name.

Rose knew that look. "Doctor—"

A loud grinding sound came from the Tardis. "We've got to go, this reality is sealing itself off… forever. Goodbye." He placed a comforting hand on Rose's head and waved goodbye to Jackie and the Metacrisis Doctor. They waved back as they watched the trio enter the Tardis and the box vanished.

Donna was at the controls, flying them back into the universe when the Doctor closed the door. "I thought we could try the planet Draconia. It sounds so amazing. Did you know they have their own brand of astrology? Can you imagine that?"

"And how d'you know that?" The Doctor asked, realising what was beginning to happen.

"Because it's in your head. And if it's in your head, it's in mine!"

"And how does that feel?"

"Brilliant! Fantastic! Molto bene! Great big universe, packed into my brain! You know you could fix that chameleon circuit if you just tried hotbinding the fragment-links and superseding the binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary" She took a deep breath. "I'm fine!"

He watched her with a sad look.

"Nah, never mind Draconia. Know who I'd like to meet? Charlie Chaplin! I bet he's great, Charlie Chaplin. Shall we do that? Shall we go and see Charlie Chaplin? Shall we? Charlie Chaplin? Charlie Chester, Charlie Brown, no, he's fiction, friction, fiction, fixing, mixing, Rickston, Brixton..." She sagged against the console, grabbing her head. "Oh my god."

"D'you know what's happening?"

"Yeah." He walked up to her.

"There's never been a human Time Lord metacrisis before now. And you know why."

"Because there can't be." Donna turned away. "I want to stay."

"Look at me. Donna, look at me."

"I was going to be with you forever."

"I know."

Sorley pushed them aside. "Don't cry now."

"Sorley, there isn't much time left for her. I have to save her," The Doctor tried to move her away. Donna moved away from them.

"Don't make me go back. Doctor, please, please don't make me go back!"

"Don't worry Donna." Sorley turned to her. "You won't."

"Sorley. Don't make promises you can't keep." Doctor snapped. He had to wipe her mind before her mind fried. "I have to do this Sorley, don't make this more difficult that it has to be," he half growled as Sorley pushed him back again.

"Doctor. Do you trust me?" Sorley asked.

"Sorley. Now isn't the time!"

"If there isn't a time you trusted me, then now is the time to. I crossed the universe through time and space, shifting through the timelines again and again. All to be here at the exact moment." Sorley knelt down beside Donna who looked at her in despair.

"Please no." Donna whispered.

Sorley placed Donna's hand between hers. "I'll see you soon, kay? Together forever." She kissed Donna's wet cheeks and reached her temple.

The Tardis hummed in agreement, soothing the anxious Time Lord. Sorley began to glow brightly, the glow engulfing both Donna and Sorley. Donna fell backwards, gasping. She was still… Doctor-Donna but she wasn't dying.

"Donna? Are you alright?" The Doctor gave her a quick once-over.

"Yeah," she placed a hand on her temple. "I'm okay. It's… weird. I have all your knowledge but I'm not dying."

"Donna needs to go home for a bit. To let it settle or else it'll come back." Sorley said, still kneeling in the very same spot. The glow that was still surrounding her was ebbing. She took a large breath, as she moved to her feet. Doctor grabbed her as her feet gave way. "Sorry give me a moment." Sorley apologized. The headache was back, pounding away furiously. She got up again, this time with Donna and Doctor's hands hovering around her to catch her if she fell.

"Sorry. I think she's going to be out for a really long while. Overtaxed her body. Really resenting this blackout thing. Sorry about the disappearing thing too."

"Who?" was all Donna could say before Sorley collapsed yet again into her arms. The Doctor carried Sorley to the med bay and ran a scan on her before turning to Donna to scan her as well. Everything had settled well, it was still spiking a bit but with a bit of break from the Tardis and the adventuring Donna would be alright. She did it. He stared at Sorley in awe. How? What did she do? All the questions he wanted to ask and she was there unconscious. He huffed in exasperation.

"Donna. I'm sending you home."

"What? Why?"

"What Sorley said was right. You need to go home for awhile to let your mind settle. If it has too much activity, it'll cause whatever she did to come back. I'll send you back for say, six months and pick you up in time for Christmas. How's that sound?"

Donna sighed. "And have Christmas at my place? You know how my mum cooks."

Hr grimaced at that. "Do I have to? I really… nope, really really don't want to."

"You and Sorley. My place, Christmas. It's not a question, it's an order." She placed her hands at her hips and looked sternly at him.

He heaved a sigh. "Fine. I'll come round when Sorley wakes up. Remember, do calming stuff. Nothing life-threatening, nothing to spike your mind activity. Not even word puzzles!"

Donna groaned, pushing the switches to fly them back to her place. "What am I going to do for six months?!"

"I don't know, pick up knitting?"

"Knitting. Really? That's all you can come up with?"

"Well… I don't know what you humans do for fun." He scratched his sideburns sheepishly.

"You're what. Nine hundred years old and you still don't know what we do for fun?" She poked him in the chest.

He parked the Tardis in their garden and leaned by the door, watching her walk up to the door.

"Donna? Donna?" Wilf flung the door expectantly, pulling Donna into a great big bear hug.

"You're back! In one piece!" Sylvia exclaimed and for what felt like the first time in a very long while, she hugged her daughter, kissing her.

Donna half-turned to the Doctor who was still watching them. "Doctor! Remember! I'll smack you if you don't come for Christmas!"

He waved in acknowledgement. "Remember! Calming stuff! Not even word puzzles!"

She rolled her eyes. "Yes mum!"

"What's this Christmas thing and why not even word puzzles Donna?"

"Oh it's a long story. Come on, let's have a cup of tea while I tell you…"

Wilf waved another goodbye, watching the blue box disappear.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Doctor sat beside Sorley, holding her hand through the mending gel. When Sorley had not woken up even after two days, he placed her in the mending gel to keep her limbs from deteriorating and to make sure she had all the right nutrients to keep alive. She really had meant a long while. The Doctor had sat here in-between the adventures, reading to her. Occasionally he would recount his adventures. He had so many questions to ask her.

Who was she? What did she mean by moved through time and space again and again? All her scans were normal. She was just a normal human. Nothing special. Nothing special at all.

He was missing something. Jack knew something, the other Doctor noticed something. What was he missing.

"Come on wake up Sorley. It's almost time for Christmas. Donna will be very upset with me if I went back and you're still asleep. I still have all the questions for you too." He half laughed. "I could skip the questions if that's what's stopping you from waking up."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"Hey Sorley, sorry I left you for awhile on your own. Quite a while too. Met this girl, reminded a bit like you and Donna. Christina was her name. We went to San Helios and well… I think I need to do that mouth gurgling thing you humans do. Licked some dead things by accident. Sort of reminded me how Donna or you would smack me on the head when I licked something gross. I really shouldn't be remembering how you guys used to abuse me! Really.

I'm kind of ready to pick up Donna, if only you'd wake up. I really don't want to be abused again when I pick her up because you're still sleeping."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"Are you done sleeping yet? It's sort of annoying that you're lying here and there's so many things to see out there!" The Doctor tucked his hands in his pockets and sulked.

"Who's she?" Christina asked, popping her head in the medbay. "I always see you coming to talk to her."

"She's… my other best friend."

"Oh. What happened to her?"

He ran his hand down his head. "It's complicated."

"You always say that. Try me." She gave him a look.

"She saved my best friend's mind by doing something that I'm not really sure myself. She collapsed into a coma before I could ask her."

"Why does it sound like you're upset that she collapsed before you could question her?"

He made an eep sound and inched from Christina. "Time to go!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So first of all. This part on Sorley, actually really felt like it was writing by itself. I had antagonized over Donna and wiping her mind for ages. I couldn't figure a way of writing it without… breaking the story. I really tried. I even originally planned that after Ten regenerated into Eleven and the Blond man joins them, that they'd go back for Donna. But I guess this really works out really well and I actually really really liked it this way. Except, geez… Sorley needs to stop collapsing. I know, the author saying that. But it works should happen that way once you figure out who Sorley is. It'll all make sense why Sorley can do this and why Sorley did that. I changed some stuff here and there, because I unfortunately mentioned that Felspoon is Donna's favourite planet a few chapters ago. Also in Tooth and Claw the werewolf mentioned something about Rose having a bit of sun in her. Not too farfetched that being slightly with the vortex in her and him being half time lord that they might outlive other people.
> 
> WHICH *drumroll* Chapter 10 NEXT! WOO! Finally. I wrote frantically to make my way up tho chapter 10. Because chapter 10 is when everything changes. Chapter 10 is all angsty.
> 
> Next chapter: Canonish, mostly non-canon: Christmas with Donna, someone save me!


	10. The drums

"Hello Sorley. It's been twelve months since you saved Donna. I know you wouldn't have approved of it, but I even tried entering your mind to see what was wrong…" he trailed off, gripping her hand. There had been nothing structurally wrong with her mind, it just felt like it was asleep or gone. The Doctor didn't know how to fix something like that. Surface commands to prod her awake hadn't worked. He didn't want to risk delving deeper when there was nothing remotely life-threatening about her situation. To delve deeper under such circumstances without permission would have repercussions. He had read all the books he could possibly find on this but he was still no closer to getting a solution or an answer to why she was still asleep. He fiddled with the straw hat and pink lei. "I went to space Hawaii. They have me a pretty pink lei. Well I have to go… Ood-Sigma has been calling for me for awhile." He groaned. "I don't want to go."

He huffed and stood. "I'll be back in a bit."

The Doctor stepped out of the Tardis. The large white flakes sailed closer from the ashen skies. He half glanced at the Tardis, his mind thinking of the girl that had laid in his med-bay for almost ten months now. He would have delayed even longer had he been alone, but he wasn't. The Ood, the telepathic species might have some inkling to her problem.

"The things I do for you Sorley…" he mumbled. He tucked his hand in his pockets, eyeing the Ood that was waiting up ahead. "So, where were we? I was summoned, wasn't I? An Ood, in the snow, calling to me. Well, I didn't exactly come straight here. Had a bit of fun, y'know, travelled about, did this and that. Got into trouble, you know me. It was brilliant. I saw the Phosphorous Carousel of the Great Magellan Gestadt. Saved a planet from the Red Carnivorous Maw. Named a galaxy Alison. Got married. That was a mistake. Good Queen Bess, and let me tell you, her nickname is no longer..." He cleared his throat, realizing he was rambling. "Anyway... what d'you want?"

"You should not have delayed," Ood-Sigma blandly replied.

"The last time I was here, you said my song would be ending soon. And I'm in no hurry for that." He wouldn't even here now had it not been for Sorley. He paused in mid-thought. "Better lock the Tardis."

Pulling his key out, he pointed it at the Tardis and the Tardis beeped like it was a car locking. "See? Like a car. I locked it like a car. Like… it's funny. No? Little bit? Blimey, try to make an Ood laugh."

' _Donna and Sorley would have laughed at it._ ' He thought. That had been the whole reason why he installed it. He had installed in two months after he had sent Donna home. Yes, he had been bored and frustrated. The manual that he found miraculously in The Library mentioned something remote control for the Tardis. How a Tardis type 40 manual had been stored in The Library, he had no idea. There was no one who was capable of reading gallifreyan left alive apart from him. The Doctor was inclined to investigate the coincidence. It was no surprise that the librarians didn't even have a code for that particular book. It wasn't supposed to be there. The Tardis did like to do that in her own library.

He followed the Ood to a city carved from stone and ice. The tall spiralling structures carved in intricate details seemed to sparkle in the dull sunlight.

"Ah! Magnificent!" He chuckled and nudged the Ood. "Oh, come on! That is… splendid! You've achieved all this in how long?"

"100 years," the Ood said monotonously.

"Then we've got a problem, 'cos all of this is way too fast. Not just the city, I mean your ability to call me. Reaching all the way back to the 21st century. Something's accelerating your species way beyond normal."

"And the Mind of the Ood is troubled."

"Why, what's happened?"

"Every night, Doctor. Every night, we have bad dreams."

They entered a cave and with prompting from Ood-Sigma, he joined hands with the Oods. A crackling face that he recognized as the Master, the crying Lucy, the worried Wilf, all of it blending into the vision that swarm from in front of his face.

"That can't be right! The Master is dead! I burnt his body!"

"Something more is happening, Doctor. The Master is part of a greater design, because a shadow is falling over creation. Something vast is stirring in the dark. The Ood have gained this power to see through time because time is bleeding. Shapes of things once lost are moving through the veil. And these vents from years ago threaten to destroy this future. And the present and the past." the Elder Ood told him.

"What do you mean?"

"This is what we have seen, Doctor. The darkness heralds only one thing, the end of time itself."

Ood-Stigma stopped the Doctor as he began to run back to the Tardis. "Remember Doctor. Your song is ending but it's not the end. What we call the beginning is often the end, and to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we all start from."

The Doctor hesitated. There was something strangely familiar about that line. He turned, running or maybe fleeing from the images he saw. Faster and faster, further and further.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

It burnt. Everything burnt. He wasn't full. He wasn't whole. He hungered. Hungered for meat, hungered for flesh, hungered for energy. Oh yes. Energy. The sweet taste of energy, the sweet taste of the life force of a man.

_One, two, three, four._

He screamed. The walls around him closing. Banging, banging. Screaming for someone to hear him, screaming for someone to stop him, screaming to break free. He was too weak, far too weak.

_One, two, three, four._

Don't kill them! Kill them! Pathetic humans. They live. They are living beings. Human beings! Not worth of a scrap of attention.

Energy.

He felt the surge of energy as he watched on horrified. NO! PLEASE! He banged again. He raged, he burnt.

_One, two, three, four._

Save them. Kill them. Help them. Eat them.

_One, two, three, four._

The bleeding drums. He flinched, pressing his hands against his ears. It gnawed at him. The pounding of it in his skull. His face contorted into a smiling madman. He was the madman. Trapped in his mind, trapped by the sound of the drums. His whole trembled as he struggled maintain power over his body. The drum beats. It sang. It demanded attention. It demanded… He turned away, forcing him to focus on anything but the sound of it.

_One, two, three, four._

The smell. Oh, the sweet delicious smell.  _The Doctor was here!_  The voice in his head sang. He hoped again and again that the Doctor would stop him. The drums. It pulsed in his blood. Oh Doctor, Doctor. Have you come to stop me? Please stop me!

_One, two, three, four._

The Doctor was here. He had counted on it. How dare the Doctor think he could stop him. He was the Master. The undisputed Genius, he was Time Lord that overcame time. He cackled wildly. He turned, the Doctor stood there scrutinizing him. Dear old friend, he tried to reach out mentally. He was burning. How dare he come. How dare he stop him time and time again. He poured the burning energy into his hands.

No! Don't kill him!

He managed to change the trajectory just as the energy left his hands. He pleaded the Doctor to walk away, the Doctor would never walk away. The Doctor would never give up on him. If only he could tell him how proud he was to have him as a friend. Despite everything he had done to the Doctor again and again, the Doctor always kept the promise they made in the academy: the promise to stop him.

The drums rumbled. It demanded blood. It demanded sacrifice.

The infuriating man. Always coming to stop him, did he think he was so good? He poured the energy into his hands again.

No!

He managed to change the trajectory again. No! The drumbeats were angry.

_One, two, three, four._

KILL! It pulsated fiercely. KILL! He brought his hands together, rubbing, burning, gathering the energy. He couldn't stop it. The drums were too loud. They were too angry.

_One, two, three, four._

He poured the energy into the Doctor. His stomach churned furiously at it. Don't die! Die you stupid old fool! No!

The Doctor was stumbling. The Master ran forward to catch him. He prayed fervently that the Doctor wasn't dead. He looked into the Doctor's eyes. They stared at each other. He struggled to break free. He struggled to tell the Doctor something, anything to indicate he was still there. That a remnant of his academy days was still there. He pounded and screamed at the drums. The wall of noise holding him back from doing anything but what the drums wanted.

 _Don't give up on me._  He pleaded.

_One, two, three, four._

The drums forced him to release his hold on the Doctor. It was angry. It was furious.

"I had estates. Do you remember my father's land, back home? Pastures of red grass stretching far across the slopes of Mount Perdition." He sighed. He mentally cringed. He had been sane then. "We used to run across those fields all day, calling up at the sky." He sank to the ground. "Look at use now."

The Doctor struggled in pain. "All that eloquence. But how many people have you killed?"

"I am so hungry."

"Your resurrection went wrong. That energy… Your body's ripped open. Now you're killing yourself," the Doctor tried to reason with him. Silly blubbering fool, hadn't he known that he would never listen? How many times had he tried to stop him?

 _How many times have he stopped you?_  He asked himself that. It wasn't really himself. The Master didn't want to think of him as that madman. He was more than a madman. He was the pinnacle of what the Time Lords could achieve. So many things that were adopted by the Time Lords had came from him even when they forgot that it had originated from him. He was the Master and the silly old blubbering fool was only a Doctor. Trapped in the prison of noise, he shook his head at the drums. The Doctor would always stop him because the Doctor was so much better than he was. The drums roared savagely.

"And that's human Christmas out there. They eat so much. All that roasting meat, cakes and red wine. Hot, fat, blood food. Pots, plates of meat and flesh and grease and juice. And baking, burnt, sticky hot skin. Hot! It's so hot! Slice! Slice Slice! It's mine! It's mine! It's mine! It's mine! Eat it! Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!"

_One, two, three, four._

He was too far gone. He clutched his head. The bloody drums. They're so needy. Always wanting something. They pound and plead and wail and howl. They roar and shrink. Beating beating beating. Always beating. Never stopping. Always beating. They hurt. They hurt so bad. The Master struggled to control himself. He always won. Even the Doctor knew it. He looked at the Master with those eyes. He hated those eyes. The eyes that knew he might have to kill him for the good of the universe, for the good of the natives.

_One, two, three, four._

"What if I ask you for help? There's more at work tonight than you and me."

"Oh yeah?" He scoffed at the Doctor. What was he up to now? Always talking. He talks too much. He always talks too much. He could barely hear the drums behind the talking.

_One, two, three, four._

"I've been told something is returning."

"And here I am!" Like that wasn't obvious. No. The Doctor learnt to talk a lot because of him. It helped him in the academy.

_One, two, three, four._

"No, it was something more."

_One, two, three, four._

Always the talking. The drums aren't happy at not being paid attention to. "But it hurts," he moaned, grabbing his head.

"I was told the end of time…" The Doctor continued, trying to keep talking or keep the drums at bay. The drums are smarter now. They throbbed angrily when they aren't being listened to.

He needs silence. He needs to listen to them. He needs the drums. He needs the beat.

"It hurts, Doctor. The noise… The noise in my head. Doctor. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Stronger than ever before! Can't you hear it?"

It hurt.

"I'm sorry."

_One, two, three, four._

"Listen, listen, listen, listen! Every minute, every second, every beat of my hearts, there it is… calling to me. Please listen."

_One, two, three, four._

"I can't hear it."

Koschei, in a moment of control, grabbed the Doctor's head, pressing the drums into his mind.

 _One, two, three, four._   _One, two, three, four._   _One, two, three, four._

The drums are happy to share. The drums are happy to be heard. They beat happily.

"But that's…!" The Doctor pushed him away.

 _One, two, three, four._   _One, two, three, four._

"What?" He was angry. Why did the Doctor move away? The drums are angry now. They demand to be shared. He knows the drums are real now. He knows that.

"I heard it. But there's no noise, there never has been. It's just your insanity. It's the… what is it? What's inside your head?"

He laughed hysterically. "It's real! It's real! It's REAL!" It always was real. He was never crazy. Crazy crazy crazy. Oh he was crazy. He was the Master yet slave to the drumming in his head. He laughed, the energy springing from his hands, zooming into the sky.

"All these years, you thought I was mad. King of the wasteland. But something is calling me, Doctor. What is it? What is it? What is it?"

 _One, two, three, four._   _One, two, three, four._   _One, two, three, four._

He had to stop the drumming. The drums beating every minute, every second. Stop beating! He raged at the drums in his head. The light, oh what was the light. Was that what was calling for him?

 _One, two, three, four._   _One, two, three, four._   _One, two, three, four._

The drums continued beating even as he fell into oblivion.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Donna was opening presents with her family when she heard the familiar wheezing in her backyard. Finally the man arrives! She rolled her eyes and hurried out to the backyard.

"There you are Doctor. Late!" Her eyes slid to the closed door and then to the single figure that stood outside it. "Where's Sorley?"

"She's… still asleep in the med-bay. Where's Wilf? I need to talk to him." The Doctor stormed into the house. "Wilf? Wilf? Come out!"

"Doctor? What happened?" Donna torn between seeing Sorley and finding out what happened. She saw the Doctor deep into conversation with her gramps. Deciding quickly, she stepped into the Tardis, this time pleasantly surprised by the warm sensation at the back of her mind. It was the sensation of the Tardis, something she hadn't felt when she was a human. Being half Time Lord meant she got something out of it, Donna mulled. She paused at the monitor. The circular gallifreyan now made sense to her. The linear timing was different.

One year. The Doctor was gone for one year. It had been six months for her and one year of solitary travelling for him. He should have just hopped to Christmas when Sorley hadn't woken for a prolonged period. He wasn't suited for solitary travelling. She was going to scold him when she spoke to him after seeing Sorley. One year of sleeping? Donna puzzled over it and felt immensely guilty. Sorley had wasted a year of her life and still counting to save her. She held her hand through the medi-gel and squeezed Sorley's hand.

"Wakey wakey Sorley!" She poked Sorley's cheeks. "Maybe she just needs her prince to kiss her." Donna said. For some reason, the thought of the Doctor kissing Sorley popped into her head. She was about to remove her hand when she realized that apart from the sensation that she recognized as the Tardis, there was this faint feeling. She could barely feel it, but it was there. Donna hurried to the console room where the Doctor was running around the console, pressing buttons and flicking switches.

"Doctor?" She called out. The first question that popped into her mind was where were they going? But the second more pressing question about Sorley formed on her mouth. "You know-"

Her gramps was in the console room.

"Gramps? What are you doing here?" She watched him stare at the console room with a bemused look. "Yes bigger on the inside."

"I thought it'd cleaner."

Donna snorted. Only her gramps would say that. "Doctor—" She started again, remembering her question.

"Not now Donna. Busy."

"Yea but. You know—"

"Chasing this man called Naismith. Have to plot the timeline, map the probability vectors and stay relative to the Master within the causal nexus."

"Yes yes. But Sorley—Hold on. Hold on. Did you just say the Master?"

He paused in his motions. "What about Sorley? Yes I did say the Master."

She had moved to pointed at the direction where she came from when she realize the Doctor had said the Master. "You mean the crazy man with the beard. The one that's trying to take over the world. He's here? Like alive. Like here?"

"Well… yes."

"That's…" She struggled to find a word to describe the feeling that surge within her. Horror, fear and then guilt for feeling that way.

"Yes. Precisely." He waved her away from the console. "No, no, no. Donna, don't pilot the Tardis. I need to scan you to check if everything settled as it should first. Later. After I settled all this."

The Tardis jerked. "That was definitely a learn-to-drive Doctor jerk," Donna remarked, she turned to her right only to find her granddad hanging into the railings for his life. Sorley had always stood there. Just five minutes in the Tardis and Donna was already missing Sorley's presence. How had the Doctor endured the absence of both of them?

"Is it always this bumpy?" Wilf asked.

"Only when he drives."

"Hey! I can take you back home right now!" The Doctor threatened, pointing at Donna in mock anger. He missed her jibes so badly. The Doctor never considered it possible, but he missed the 2 gingers ganging up on him.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The Master found himself at the mansion with Naismith. The pitiful human who wanted immortality. Bounded and tied as though it'd stop him if he truly wanted to break free. Oh no, the Master sensed something was greater at work. He would stay and bide his time.

_One, two, three, four._

The gate! The drums were driving him mad. He willed himself to ignore the pounding drums. The pounding headache it induced was something he had lived with for over nine hundred years. The Doctor and him had originally sought to stop him. No. It had always only been him. The Doctor, like everyone else, had thought he was mad. The Doctor had merely agreed to find a cure so that he could keep an eye on him. He could just imagine the sneer on his father's face when he told him about the drums. No, his father was not sneering, his father was worried. The father had thought he was insane as well. Everyone on Gallifrey knew what happened to the insane.

_One, two, three, four._

Leave! That's why he left! No. That was not why he left. He didn't want to leave. Why did he leave? The Master couldn't remember anymore. The drums. All he remembered was the drums.

_One, two, three, four._

He could smell the Doctor. He was coming. The drums pounded happily. He could feel the heat in his blood coursing through him in anticipation.

"Better get to work." The Master cracked his fingers and began clacking on the keyboard.

_One, two, three, four._

It throbbed. The sound resounded loudly in his mind like a never ending drum beat. Oh that was genius, describing a drum beat sound to a drum beat sound. His lips curled in a sneer. He pushed everything away. Just focusing on fixing the gate helped to keep the growing drumming away.

_One, two, three, four._

"One, two, three, four," he muttered softly under his breath. He sounded totally insane. The Master found he didn't care anymore. He would do anything to keep the drums happy, to keep the drums under control, to keep the drums away.

Oh he could hear the pathetic humans moaning away about some boxing day. Yap yap. How did the Doctor ever like them? Somewhere in the back of his head, a small bit of him shook disappointed at his reaction to the humans.  _'They weren't pathetic,'_  the small bit of him muttered. Yap yap. He pushed the drums to the small bit. He could see it cringe. Feebly banging itself against the noise. Pathetic, just like the humans.

The pathetic humans were calling him Saxon. Really. They were so deplorable that they just couldn't figure that Harold Saxon wasn't his real name. What a human name.

_One, two, three, four._

"My name… is the Master," he corrected them. He pressed the enter key, watching the gate power up. Oh the small puny humans. They thought it was some mending machine, some gate to immortality. It was so much more. They would never be able to appreciate the full value of the machine with their small minds.

"The visitor will now be restrained."

The Master had expected this. Did they really think a straitjacket and a collar was going to stop a Time Lord? Maybe if he was the Doctor, it might work, but he was the Master. He was the Lord above everyone, the man who overcame everything. He smirked, obediently allowing them to strap him up. It was almost ready.

_One, two, three, four._

The drums pulsated at his plans, at his thoughts. If he could hear the drums so loudly now, what if everyone on the planet could hear them?

"Turn the Gate off, right now!" The Doctor yelled, slamming into the room.

Oh the poor Doctor. Always here to crash a party. The small part of him called out in relief. The Master scoffed at it, stomping it hard with the drums. Oh yes! The drums loved that. Stomping, ripping, smashing, shredding. It bubbled with glee.

_One, two, three, four._

_Not long now._  It seemed to sing.

He didn't know what it meant but if it meant he could find out where it was from or what it was, anything would be fine. The Master found he could care less about anything else, much less pathetic little humans.

He ripped the straitjacket off with his energy, leaping into the Gate with great excitement.

"Homeless, was I" The Master said snidely. He grinned, his lips curling wildly at the Doctor's horrified look. "Destitute and dying? Well, look at me now."

"Deactivate it. All of you, turn the whole thing off!" The Doctor demanded.

' _Too late, Theta,_ ' the small voice in the tiny prison said to nothing but the monster that controlled him.

The Master howled with laughter at the Doctor's attempt.

"Get out of there!" The Doctor half pleaded.

_One, two, three, four._

"Too late… Doctor," the Master sneered, shooting a bolt at him.

"Doctor! Doctor, there's this face…" Wilf started.

Donna pushed Wilf behind her, upon seeing the Master. She glanced at the Doctor who gotten off the floor and was frantically sonicking the controls.

"The gun," Wilf pushed his old gun to Donna who absentmindedly pocketed it.

"I can't turn it off!" he wailed.

Oh the silly Doctor. Did he really think that the Master would have overlooked such a minor thing?

"That's because I locked it, idiot," he scoffed.

The Doctor looked at him horrified. "Do you even have any idea what you're doing?"

The Master looked at him evenly. Did the Doctor even doubt his genius? He had realized it the moment he had set eyes on the thing. Oh yes, he was that good. The Doctor could never hope to compete with him, the Master. The Doctor needed his little  _sonic screwdriver_  to even get close to him. The master giggled at the desperate look of the Doctor.

' _Koschei, tell me you're still there._ ' Came the telepathic voice of the Doctor. The need for reassurance and despair came so strongly that the Master nearly staggered back from the Doctor's telepathic sending.

_One, two, three, four._

"Nope. Just me, The Master. Lord of everything," he grinned.

_One, two, three, four._

Koschei banged leaned his head against the noise of wall, frantically trying to reply. He was far too weak, the drums were far too loud, far too dominant. There was barely anything left in him to pull control back. This was the end. Koschei had came to terms with it for a long time now. The last time he had been destroyed, he had thanked the Doctor. The Doctor understood in a way that he hadn't exactly been him. He had always been that compassionate soul that cared more for people than his own self. That was why the Doctor had left Gallifrey to start with. The Doctor had come in pursue of him, to stop him, to uphold the pact.

There was the fear in the Doctor's eyes. The same fear he had seen when he laid there dying in the Doctor's arms on the Valiant. The same fear he had seen when The Doctor watched him be executed by the Daleks. There was no coming back from a permanent death.

"So who am I talking to?" The Doctor's snide question asked. He had masked his fear and desperate in a cool calm mask.

_One, two, three, four._

"I am The Master." He spun around with his hands held up. "But now's not the time for those questions. You're gonna love this. Ready?"

The humans' heads shook back and forth at an ridiculous speed and the Doctor watched on horrified. "You can't have!"

"Grand dad!" Donna cried out, she clutched her grand dad, watching his head turn into the Master. "Doctor! They're.. they've all turned into him! What have you done, you monster!?"

She stalked towards the Master and stared with every bit of Donna's version of oncoming storm that she could muster.

"Donna- No." The Doctor tried to pull her back, but she shook him off fiercely.

She pointed at the Master. "He just turned my Grand dad into… that… and you say no? He's a monster! He should be…" She grabbed her head as the sudden memory of The Master in his academy days flashed through her mind. "Oh."

She glanced at the Doctor who stared back sadly. "Yes." The Doctor replied. His shoulders slumped forward dejectedly.

"So who am I talking to?" he glared at the Master.

_One, two, three, four._

"I am the Master."

"Yes. That's what I've assumed so had I not heard the drums. The drums were real. I was wrong." The Doctor hung his head, his hands tucked into his pockets. "He had been trying to tell me about it over the centuries. I always thought he was steadily growing crazy."

The Master smirked. "Oh. I have always been steadily growing crazy." He waved his hands, his clones quickly tying both Donna and Doctor into chairs. "Always crazy."

_One, two, three, four._

He tapped his temple, flashing them a large smile that beamed from ear to ear. "I wondered.. wondered, wondered, wondered. What are they?"

The Master stopped in front of the Doctor, placing his hands on the armrests. He leaned forward. His mouth started to move then like a flash, his smile dropped. "What are they, Doctor?"

The Doctor's eyes widened in recognition and then it was over.

_One, two, three, four._

The Master frowned briefly. "How persistent. You'd think he'd have learnt to just lie down and roll over."

"Don't lose. You can fight it."

"Too late. He's gone now. His part is over." He placed his finger on his lips. "Shssss. Listen." He closed his eyes.

"Master-" The Doctor started. The Master gagged the Doctor before resuming.

_One, two, three, four._

"Listen, listen, listen, listen! It's coming!" The Master broke out in hysterical laughter. "Here comes the end of time!"

The Doctor stared at The Master horrified then at the screen that now showed the blazing trail across the Earth's atmosphere. The Master was never a stray piece as the Doctor had thought. He had always been part of it. He was the prophecy all along.

' _Koschei. I know you're in there still. Fight it! You can do it._ '

There was no reply, no response, not even a flicker of it left on the Master's face that laughed manically at him.

"Open up the nuclear bolt. Infuse the power lines to maximum."

"This is a terrible idea, Master," Donna spat out.

The Master smiled at her. "And why do you think so, half-breed?" What a freak she was. His mind registered her as a Time Lord yet not really. It was rather unnerving looking at her. Did she suddenly think she was better because she was half Time Lord now? The drums agreed happily.

_One, two, three, four._

Oh, that thought made the drums happy. He placed the diamond that his clones had found and brought back for him into the device that he had just built speciality for this occasion.

"Oh yes. Now hear the drums!" He motioned his arms like a conductor conducting an orchestra. The machine lit up, pulsing the beat that had tormented him for so many years.

_One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four._

Koschei screamed. He crawled to the furthest corner, away from the pounding that seemed to bleed into him. He could see cracks forming ever since he managed to whisper that one sentence to the Doctor. The Doctor knew he was still there, hanging on. Hanging on. He looked at the prison. The sounds of the pounding drums only for company. He could see the mind of the drums.

_One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four._

The drums were real. They didn't just exist. They had steadily strove to take over him. Beating the sound into every inch of him, stealing every freedom and willpower from him. Hunting him, haunting him.

_One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four._

"What are you doing?" Donna asked, her voice was trembling, pulling attention away from the Doctor. She had seen what he was doing and quickly realized that for him to free himself, she would need to distract the Master.

"I thought you knew," he sneered. "Pathetic half-breed. Are you even using that Time Lord portion of yours? Oh, I guess you only have the Doctor's. That doesn't count for very much."

He tilted his head mockingly at her. "I'll have you know that the Doctor is the most brilliant man I've ever seen," Donna said, thrusting her chin up to him with a determined look in her eyes.

Koschei agreed.  _He's more than you could ever be, Master. He's defeated you many times over._

The Master chortled. "Oh yes. He is the most brilliant you I've ever seen…" He smiled widely. "If I was comparing him to a human. He's pretty much a joke to us, Time Lords. But that of course, excludes you. Half-breed."

The drums loved that word. Half-breed. He'd take extra effort to include it in every sentence.

"Clearly, you Lordys, can't see what matters then." Donna replied. "Blind fools. All of you were."

The Master laughed. "Perhaps. But that makes you one. A half-blind fool!"

"Yes, but you were so much more." The Doctor interjected, pulling the gag off. He stood up. Stalking towards Donna he ripped off the cords that bound her. "You could have been beautiful. With a mind like that, we could have travelled the stars."

The drums beat excitedly at something behind him. Spinning around, they watched five Time Lords materialized.

"Blimey…" Donna said. Rassilon frowned at her, quickly deciding to ignore her, he turned his attention to the Doctor and the Master. "My Lord Doctor. My Lord Master. We are gathered for the end."

The Doctor finally realizing what the device had been doing a little belatedly. "Listen to me. You can't…"

"It is a fitting paradox that our salvation comes at the hands of our most infamous child."

"Oh, he's not saving you. Don't you realise what he's doing?"

The Master looked at the Doctor then back at Rassilon. He didn't think he was possible, but the drumbeats pounded even louder than he had ever heard it do so. "Hey, no, hey! That's mine. Hush." He pointed at the Doctor. "Look around you. I've transplanted myself into every single human being. But who wants a mongrel little species like them? Because now I can transplant myself into every single Time Lord. Oh, yes, Mr President, sir, standing there all noble and resplendent and decrepit. Think how much better you're going to look as me!"

The drum beats laughed at his words. Rassilon held his gauntlet-covered hand and as it glowed, the human race returned to themselves.

"No! What are you doing! Why!? Stop it!" The Master cried out. He staggered, falling to his knees. The drums were angry for what he did. Angry, so angry!

_One, two, three, four._

"Oh your knees, mankind." Rassilon said. Oh, the power of the Time Lord was so obvious especially in the voice of Rassilon. The humans could hear it, feel it and trembled at it. Without questioning, they kneeled, frightened of the strange beings.

"No, that's fine, that's good. Because you said salvation. I still saved you, don't forget that." The Master said quickly, hoping to get a slice of the pie while he still could.

"The approach begins."Rassilon looked up at the sky as though the Master had not spoken.

"The what?"

"Something is returning. Don't you ever listen? That was the prophecy. Not someone, something." The Doctor shot back angrily.

"What is it?"

"They're not just bringing back the species. It's Gallifrey. Right here, right now."

"But isn't that fantastic? The Time Lords restored."

"You weren't there." Donna stalked up to him, pointing hard into his chest. He glared at her. "I see them in his memories. It's not just the Time Lords that are coming back. The Daleks, the Skaro Degradations, the Hord of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-weres. They're all coming back." She flung at hand at the glowing red planet that loomed closer. "Hell is descending you idiot!"

He scoffed. "My kind of world." The little bit of him in his tiny corner was horrified at her description.

"We will initiate the Final Sanction. The end of time will come at my hand. The rupture will continue, until it rips the Time Vortex apart. We will ascend to become creatures of consciousness alone, free of these bodies, free of time, and cause and effect, while creation itself ceases to be."

The Doctor pulled Donna back, behind him. On one side, he had Rassilon and his cronies, the other he had the Master. He glanced back and forth at them, pushing her to the side, away from him.

"Then take me with you. Let me ascend into glory." The drums roared with laughter at the Master's words. He frowned, not understanding why the drums were being so condescending now.

"You are diseased, albeit a disease of our own making. No more." Rassilon replied. The drums agreed.

The drums hummed in anticipation as Rassilon held out his gauntlet-covered hand. There was an audible click and the three men turned to Donna who stood there with the gun, Wilf had entrusted her with, pointing at Rassilon.

"Oh? The Half-breed decides to join the conversation." Rassilon smirked.

 _Half-breed._  The way he spoke sounded just like how the drums would say it. It burnt. A roaring sound filled his ears and swamped his senses as Koschei realised exactly what Rassilon had meant. The prison walls shattered and a look of fury overcame the Master's confused face. His eyes not wavering as he stared at Rassilon, filled with hatred, hury.

"Get out of the way!" He pushed the Doctor aside, his hand glowing. "You did this to me!" The bolt strikes Rassilon in the chest, pushing him backwards.

The Doctor leapt to Donna, snatching the gun from her hands and shooting at the device. The machine burst into flames and the Gallifrey began to flicker.

"You made me! Tormenting me! All my life! Then listen to this! ONE TWO THREE FOUR!" Koschei shot the bolt at Rassilon in time to his counting.

"Back to hell," Donna whispered.

"Koschei!" The Doctor ran forth, pulling him away as the link sent Gallifrey back to where it came from.

Koschei lay there, panting. He was dying. The drums were angry. "It hurts," he moaned, clutching his head. "The pounding."

The Doctor gripped his hands. "Stay with me, Koschei." He placed his hands on Koschei's temple and without hesitation, he delved into Koschei's mind. Koschei struggled to keep the drumbeats at bay. The remnants of the anger aiding his control over his mind and body but he knew his mind was an utter mess. The Doctor wept at the agony that his best friend had undergone for all those years. This time, knowing exactly what he was looking for, the Doctor searched Koschei's mind, leaving no stone unturned. There in a corner of the mind, he found it. The beat, the signal placed out of sync in his own mind, safely hidden from everyone except those who knew exactly what they was looking for. The Doctor pulled it out forcibly then sent bits of his regeneration energy to aid the energy lost in Koschei's body.

Koschei clenched the Doctor's hands. The silence. All his life, he had wished them gone. "It's so quiet."

"I've sent some regeneration energy to stabilize your energy lost. I think after we go back to the medbay, I can do a more thorough scan and attempt to fix it."

Koschei nodded, not really paying attention. All he could hear was the silence and the emptiness in him now. He laughed. At first it was just laughing, but the more he laughed, the more he found he couldn't stop. He looked at the Doctor who was now staring at him worried and it made him laugh even maniacally.

"Is he alright?" Donna asked, her eyes squinting a bit from the headache that was beginning to grow.

"I hope so…" The Doctor lifted his eyes to meet Donna's and frowned at her. "What's wrong?"

She waved his concerned face away. "Just a headache. Be fine when I take an aspirin or something later."

"Probably not aspirin. You're half Time Lord now, that makes you likely to be allergic to it," Koschei said, finally sobering up.

"Are you okay?" The Doctor pulled him up.

"Yea. Had a moment there." The Doctor furrowed his eyebrows at Koschei. Koschei shrugged in response. "I always complained about the incessant drumbeats. You removed them and now all I can think of is this… silence… this emptiness at where the drums seemed to fill. Just found it funny."

"Oh my god. Doctor!" Donna stepped away from him. His hands had started to glow.

"You're regenerating… because of me…" Koschei looked at the Doctor in remorse. "I'm sorry."

The Doctor shook his head. "Don't be. It's my honour to. I'm sorry it took me so long to find a cure."

"Thank you." Koschei squeezed his hand and stepped away.

The glow overtook the Doctor, his features changing. Floppy hair, a strong chin, dark green eyes meeting Donna's. "Hello! How do I look?"

"Wait don't tell me." He looked down. "Legs. I've still got legs, good." He kissed his knee, testing it.

"Arms. Hands. Ooh, fingers, lots of fingers. Ears, yes. Eyes, two. Nose, I've had worse. Chin, blimey. Hair..." He ran his hand through his hair feeling the length and began to panic. He turned to Koschei wide eyed. "I'm a girl!"No! No... I'm not a girl." He declared, finding his adam's apple. "And still not ginger!" At that statement, Koschei roared with laughter.

"What's so funny?" Donna quirked at eyebrow at Koschei.

"Well. Ever since he saw Brax had ginger hair, he's always wanted one. All of us in the Deca had ginger hair at one point or another, all of us but him."

"I'm never going to be ginger!" He moaned, taking the Tardis key out, he sonicked it to summon it.

"You finally got the remote working."

"I was bored." The Doctor strode into the Tardis. "Med bay first for the two of you. Donna first…" he glanced at Koschei who stood awkwardly by the door.

"I can stay here-" Koschei motioned at the doorway. "I can understand if you don't want me near the console."

The Doctor sighed. "Mast-"

Koschei grimaced. "Please call me Koschei. I… I don't think I was really me when I picked it." He slumped onto the bench. "I don't think I had much control over myself towards the… end. The title is distasteful."

The Doctor nodded. "I trust you." Giving Koschei a little squeeze on the shoulder, the duo walked towards the med bay, falling into conversation.

Koschei looked at the console room. It was very grunge, very different from the console room he remembered it to be. The Tardis hummed happily as he sent a telepathic apology to her. Oh, she had always known that he was not quite himself. It was odd how comforting that she had accepted it.

"-So you'll pick me up in four months, yea?" Donna's voice echoed into the console room as she walked down the stairs. "Your turn, spaceboy. Gonna look for my granddad."

"She's… half Time Lord. How?" Koschei asked. He made his way round the console, patting the console.

"Well there was the D-" The Tardis hummed loudly, the time rotor began wheezing, glowing brightly. "What did happened!? It's dematerializing!"

"I don't know!" Koschei retorted. "I can't remove my hand! I was just patting it!"

The Doctor jumped down the stairs, trying to pull Koschei's hand off the console. The console grew brighter and brighter then engulfed Koschei, knocking the Doctor back. Parts of the grating burst flames. A sudden explosion rocked the Tardis. The Doctor whirled back to the console, frantically trying to stop whatever that was occurring. Koschei fell to his knees, gasping loudly. He felt… stable, filled with energy. It felt like the Tardis had transplanted her own energy into him.

"We're crashing!" The Doctor yelled as he felt his own stomach plummeting with the Tardis. "Koschei! Go to the med bay and secure Sorley!"

Koschei didn't know who Sorley was, but he made his way to the med bay, shuffling against the explosions that was still rocking the Tardis. A girl, wearing a white dress, lay on the bed. Or should have been, the medi-gel was draining from the bed and she was lying on the floor with a blossoming bruise on her forehead.

He reached over to pick her up and suddenly the room disappeared. The silence, no. Not the silence. The sound of the explosions, the humming of the Tardis was gone. They weren't on the Tardis anymore. Koschei, still carrying Sorley, whipped around staring confused at his surroundings. He was in… Cardiff? Why on earth was he on Cardiff?

Then everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter : Non-canon - Trapped


	11. Trapped

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who watched Torchwood, Adam here is not quite the same Adam and this is not a canon episode of Torchwood either. It's a shorter chapter than usual. This chapter… is extremely difficult to write for reasons I do not understand. Sorry if its not up to my usual standard, although seeing how few hits/comments I get… :( I suppose I don't have much standard.

'Bleeding stars!' was the first thing that Koschei thought of when he woke up. His second thoughts were replaying what had happened prior to him blacking out which consequently led him to worrying about the girl that the Doctor had entrusted him with. Not even four hours, going by his internal body clock, had the Doctor trusted him that he had broken it already.

Koschei was glad that he had not moved a muscle since rousing. His senses were picking up metallic smells and some even chemical smells, none of which brought at good news to him. It didn't have a linger antiseptic after smell that med bays or hospitals smelled to stew in, so he was definitely not in one. He couldn't smell the girl. She would have a distinct smell after coming out of the medi-gel and that smell was absent. So she was either separated from him. The floor was hard and cold beneath him and felt wet but not the sort of liquid wet. It felt like the kind of porous rock wet. No smell of sunlight. He was definitely underground.

Satisfied with the possibilities of the surroundings, Koschei began mentally checking his body before deciding on how to deal with retrieving the girl. He was unharmed apart from the throbbing cheek and eye. He wasn't even bound. Something that greatly surprised him.

He gingerly opened his eyes, taking in his surroundings. He had been right on most counts, except there was a glass wall dividing the hallway to what was his cell. A man stood outside his cell. Blonde with almost luminous green eyes. No. Brunette. Koschei clutched his throbbing eye, trying to get a proper visual of the man. Oh, he was seeing the man all fine. The man simply didn't have a fixed look.

"Hello." Koschei stood up and inspected him. "Who are you? Where am I?"

The man turned to his right. Probably the end of the hallway judging by the air currents, Koschei deduced. He smirked slightly before replying Koschei, "They know you're awake."

"But that doesn't answer my question." Koschei quirked an eyebrow at him.

"Yes it doesn't," he admitted with a small smile on his face.

"Adam? What are you doing here?" a low tenor voice asked. Koschei could hear heavy footsteps echo down the hallway before seeing Jack move into his vision. Jack glanced at Koschei, quickly noticing how Koschei winced and turned away. "Still early I guess," Jack muttered.

Koschei frowned at Jack. How did humans handle these kind of things? He opened his mouth then closed it, rethinking what he should say in such situations. What does one say to the person that they killed repeatedly over a year? Koschei was saved the trouble of saving anything by a piercing scream.

Jack whipped around and half-jogged down the hallway before running back to his cell and flinging it open. Jack said nothing. There was no time for either of them to say anything when the scream was followed by the sound of gun firing. Koschei ran down the hallway, his time lord physique pushing him faster than the humans. He would deal with 'Adam' when he had the time to. For now, he didn't seem to pose a threat.

The black haired female was sprawled on the floor. Her body shook from the pain. Her hands were clawing the black haired man that crouched over her. He pressed his hand over her bleeding thigh. Blood poured through his hands and pooled onto the floor.

"Hold on Gwen." The man whirled his head around, noticing him. "Koschei, the med kit, first cupboard, first shelf."

Koschei pursed his lips. "Where's the girl that came with me?" His first priority was to secure the girl that the Doctor had entrusted him. Not some human.

"She's fine. Now the med kit. Hurry." The man replied urgently.

Jack shoved Koschei aside, passing the man med kit in his hands. "Owen, what happened?"

The man, Owen, began pulling things out of the med kit. "Tell them, Gwen. Jack talk to her, she's going into shock." He pushed his fingers into her wound, pulling out bullets.

"T-they took her," the woman, Gwen replied. "Tosh…"

"Who took her?" Jack pressed. Koschei, still paying half attention to the useless conversation, turned to the computer. Typing furiously onto the keyboard, he hacked into the system, pulling up video feeds. He searched frantically for the ginger-haired girl. There was no sign of her.

He spun around to Jack, worried and anxious about his charge. "What did you do to her?" He got up, pulling Jack by the collar. "Tell me what you did with her?"

Jack pushed him away. Casually smoothing his collar down, he replied, "Safe. Now, if you excuse me, I have to rescue Tosh. Ianto." He checked his gun and slipped it into his hostler, nodding to Ianto who mimicked the same thing.

"Tell me she's safe isn't enough. I need to get her and go back to the Tardis." If there was an alien here, then the only way she'd be safe is back on the Tardis. An alien. Koschei turned around to 'Adam'. "He's gone. Should have realized it. Bleeding stars."

Koschei stood between them and the exit. "Listen to me," Koschei said. He gritted his teeth, forcing the words that flowed from his mouth to appear in some form of belying calm. "The girl that was with me is far more important. I need to know where she is. You have an alien amidst you and now both him and this  _Tosh_  is missing. I have every reason to suspect that this is not a coincidence. Where is the girl?"

"No Koschei. It's you who don't understand. But that's okay. You're still early in your timestream. Sorley is safe because her program is still running. Tosh on the other hand would not be for long."

Koschei stared at them puzzled, processing the best he could with what Jack had said. Koschei's voice was quiet in an utterly incredulous tone when he replied, "Program?"

"Yes. Future stuff. Can't explain. You told me not to. Now, we need to save Tosh. It'd be faster if you're coming." Jack handed him a gun.

Koschei sighed loudly. "Don't need one." He waved it off.

"Better take it. Judging from your relationship with Sorley, I don't think the Doctor fixed you yet. Can't risk you using your energy bolts."

Koschei frowned at him. "Speaking of which,  _the Girl_ 's name is  _Sorley_ ," Jack said with a knowing smile.

Koschei snatched the gun his hand. "How primitive this gun is," he mumbled. "Let's go then."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Sorley couldn't remember what was the last thing she did. She had awoken in that strange dark room once again. The dark room that seemed to stretch out beyond her. It was her second time here. The last time she had been here, she had been in The Library. It was same silence that filled the room. The deafening silence.

"Hello?" She called out. "I'm Sorley Morin." She said, remembering how it went the last time.

_Sorley Morin, Identification Number 5733-40-13 15 18 9 14-9-200, Code Name . Age 840. Please confirm or deny._

The voice appeared in her mind just as it did the previous time. "Confirm."

_Please input password and passcode._

Sorley finally realized it. It wasn't a room at all. This… was her mind wasn't it? It made sense when the voice seemed to just… 'appear'. But why was it her mind? The wall? Sorley tried to theorize.

_Please input password and passcode. Disconnection in 5 microspans._

"Oh." She frowned, trying to remember how she had answered it the last time. "Danger will follow me, everywhere I go. Angels will call on me and take me to my home. This tired mind just wants to be led home."

_Password and passcode accepted. Level 1 access granted._

"Great." The darkness cleared and Sorley found herself in that same room she had seen the previous time. "Still the same room." She commented, pottering around the room, picking up and placing down random things.

"Who are you? Where am I?" Sorley was determined to get to the bottom of this… room.

_This is the matrix. This is your room._

"What is a matrix? How is this, my room?"

_A matrix is a super-computer, a rectangular array of numbers, symbols or expressions. A virtual-reality data space fed by sensors and knowledge. This is your room because you imagine it to be._

Sorley looked around the room, her mind trying to think of the room she had on the Tardis. The room around her faded into the room she had on the Tardis.

"Am I in my mind?"

_Negative._

"Where am I then?"

_This is your room._

Sorley growled in frustration. It almost was as frustrating at talking to Siri. She paused in mid-thought.

"Are you a program?"

_Affirmative. This is the matrix._

"Is Matrix a code name for your program?"

_Negative._

"Explain." Sorley wondered if there was a better way of extracting the information.

_Negative. Insufficient permissions._

She flopped onto the bed, looking up into the ceiling. "I am not 840 years old… I'm 26."

_Affirmative. Correct age is impossible to calculate. 840 is an estimation since second activation. Correct age would be 10,021. Calculation is not accurate due to lapse of activation._

"I'm 26, not… 10,021 or 840. 26," Sorley emphasised on the 26. If it was bloody computer it should be able to get a simple thing correct.

_Negative._

Sorley heaved a sigh. "How do I leave?"

_Exit is impossible. Physical body is not stable. Hibernation is required to stabilize the energy in the body._

Sorley sat up at the reply. "What do you mean I can't exit? What about Exit Program?"

_Exit prohibited._

Sorley ran to the door and tugged at it. It was fake or was refusing to pull open. She wasn't on the Tardis. There was no sound. Just her and whatever was in the room. She slid down the door.

"Someone get me out of here. Anyone…"

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The Other wasn't doing very well by herself. The reading and talking from her Thief had helped the Other through her hibernation. The time for the end of her hibernation was not far now. An intruder would bring a forceful awakening to her hibernation.

Oh, it was not going to be very pleasant. The Wrong One would have to die. The poor wrong one.

The Other would be very sad. There was nothing she could do. The Wrong One have to die so that the Other may live. The Wrong One knows. He loves her, he will love her. Even though he knows that the Other will never be able to return it.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"GO!" Koschei yelled at Jack. He fired rapidly into the opposite direction, bringing the rear up. As he had suspected, Tosh had been a decoy the whole time. There were a hundred things he wanted to furiously tell the human, but that would be after he had managed to secure Sorley.

They burst out of the dingy basement, and into the cold miserable rain. It was raining, the sort of rain with the large drops that drenched you in seconds. Koschei had a dislike for Jack, mostly due to the weird nauseating feeling he got when looking at Jack. Koschei wasn't really bothered about the man Owen who just talked to much. He probably liked Ianto the best among everything he had seen and met since he woke up. Ianto was quiet, never offered the annoying mindless drivel that Owen seemed to. But it was the rain that made Koschei dislike Cardiff tremendously. It rarely rained on Gallifrey. Rain there was warm and cool to the face, not cold and miserable.

Koschei pulled himself into the van beside Owen. The three men and woman took one look at the gloomy expression on Koschei's face and burst out laughing.

"He always gets the same look when it rains. Ianto, you should have passed him the umbrella that he keeps her just now."

"If you remember, we were busy saving Tosh."

Koschei rolled his eyes at the mindless bantering. "So where is Sorley?" he asked, interrupting them. Not that they were saying anything important.

"In the Time lock room. Nothing can get in unless you have the code and power the device down."

Koschei stared sharply at Jack's words, his eyes sliding to Tosh then back to Jack. Jack swore, realizing how bad it was. "Ianto, as fast as possible. Sorley's in danger."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Her thigh felt like it was on fire when Gwen came to. Her head pounded viciously. It felt like something heavy had rolled over her. She realized she wasn't very far from the truth when she climbed to her knees. The metal stool with a noticeable bent lay near her. Her arm felt limp.

"I made a mistake." Adam intoned, pulling her up to her feet. "You're going to show me where Sorley is being kept."

He smiled widely as he watched her tremble. He palmed her gun. "I don't really need to use the gun."

Gwen could feel his breath on her hair. It wasn't warm and it didn't stink. It was cool and smelt sort of like peppermint. "I d-don't know where So-Sorley is…" She gasped as he jerked her head upwards, placing the cool metal on the side of her cheek.

"I d-don't know!" He clicked the safety off.

"Last chance."

Owen popped his head in. "Found her. Mistress sent new orders."

Adam froze at his words, his eyes going blank. "New orders received." He threw Gwen to the side and nodded to Owen, following Owen to another door much further in. It was the cogdoor.

Gwen knew she had to stop them. Everyone else was out saving Tosh. Gwen struggled to her feet. The world swirled around her. Black dots flittering across her vision. With great determination, she forced herself to walk towards them, her hands automatically reaching for the secret stash of weapons that Tosh had found.

"Step away from the door." She said with as much determination and intimidation she could in her voice.

They turned around. "What are you going to do? Shoot me?" Adam asked.

Gwen didn't bother responding, she simply pressed the trigger. With some incredible luck, it hit bulleye into Owen's head.

"OWEN!" Gwen staggered forward, trying to catch Owen as he collapsed to the floor.

"Gwen, get away from him." Jack pulled her up and away.

"I d-didn't mean to. I killed Owen!" Gwen wailed, batting the torch.

"Look at me Gwen." Gwen blinked frantically, pulling the owner of the voice to her face.

"Owen? You're alive? How? I- I killed you…"

"It's an alien that steals faces-" Jack begun, Gwen could see he wasn't really paying attention to the conversation. He was distracted by something. His eyes glanced to his right, towards Koschei.

"No!" Jack half-reached for Koschei, grabbing only air.

Koschei had already leapt forward. An animalistic roar echoed in the hub, his hand glowing with white energy. The cog door was already opening as Koschei lunged forward. He tackled the first one closest to the door. His hand had already wrapped around the fake Owen's throat by the time he slammed the fake Owen onto the floor. His charge was still there. Koschei hesitated upon sensing the vortex lurking beneath the alien's skin. He wasn't just any alien. He was a time lord.

The fake Owen snarled, his canine teeth bared and were abnormally large and long. He was a time lord, but he wasn't one anymore. Koschei pushed the fake Owen back to the ground, this time causing the fake Owen to snap his head hard onto the ground. With the energy that Koschei had charged in his hand, he tugged the vortex out from beneath the skin. The fake Owen made a loud keening sound. The lambent light overwhelmed him, swallowing him before imploding to nothing.

Koschei swore and stormed through the opened cog door. Jack was already dealing with Adam, as much as he could to an alien that couldn't die.

"I'm getting the irony here!" Jack shouted. He hurled himself into Adam's chest, emptying his almost empty gun into his chest. Adam fell to the ground, dead. "Good we have a minute or two before he comes back to life. How did you kill the other?"

"Unravelled him." Koschei slung Sorley over his shoulder.

"Unravelled? You could do that?"

Koschei pulled Jack in front of him but it was too late.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It wasn't intentional, but I just realized Donna, Amy and Sorley are gingers. The poor Doctor is going to be so jealous...


	12. Fragmented Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary of what happened so far:
> 
> Since the Stolen Earth arc, Sorley has been in a coma from overusing her energy to save Donna. The Doctor found out that Rassilon had planted the drums in the Master’s head as a signal and that the drums was a parasite that took over the Master’s head. After sending Gallifrey and the council back, he removed the drums at the cost of his life and regenerated. The Master renounced his title and resumed his academy’s nickname, Koschei. Inside the Tardis, something happened when Koschei touched the console and caused it to malfunction. Under the Doctor’s instruction he went to make sure Sorley was safe but something happened and Sorley and Koschei ended up in Cardiff. Torchwood was under attack by 2 entities that used to be Time Lords. Koschei was able to kill one of the entities permanently but was too late in stopping the other.
> 
> And now you’re all caught up.

Jack had seen Adam launch himself at Sorley. She wasn’t going to die from a simple blade wound. Sorley was far more tenacious than that. It wasn’t about her dying that caused him to panic, it was his apprehension of her program that would definitely trigger again. He threw himself towards the blade and with Koschei pulling him towards the blade, he made it just barely but not enough from the program reactivating itself. It had sensed that she was in danger and had automatically shifted them.

“Here we go again!” he muttered, dying against the blade. A golden glow overtook them, swallowing them up whole and they disappeared.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

There was the heat then the voices that roared and whispered in her aching body. Sorley whimpered, her reflexes taking over as it sensed the pressure over her body. Her body fought against the pressure, clawing and biting. It was not something she did consciously. Her mind still spun from the black black darkness it had been tucked away in. Memories that she had recalled and experienced while she was asleep folding itself neatly back behind the tightly locked room, returning back into the hazy fuzzy memories. There was no recollection of where she had been or what she had been doing. Just a strange blank slate as she finally consciously became aware of her surroundings.

The voice that spoke urgently yet oddly slow and placating was velvety, almost seductive. “It’s ok. Let her go,” a man said, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She felt the pressure and looked up. Her vision spun momentarily, slowly subsiding into a pair of light blue eyes. He smiled. Sorley recognized him. His name was Jack, a voice at the back of her head whispered. “I’m sure you recognize me.” He added.

A flurry of memories relating to him rushed through her head, spiking a pain into her skull. A strange defragmented sensation overcame her. The memories that were hers and the memories that felt like hers but did not feel like they belonged. She hadn’t met him before yet her mind had already memories of him. ‘Captain Jack Harkness’, the man who would become Face of Boe, the immortal, the undying, the man who would give his last energy to rescue the citizens of New, New York.

She moved to grip her pounding head, her body screaming in alternating pain and numbness when she shifted her position.

“Why am I here?” she managed to choke out between the throbs.

She was pressed between two men in an extremely compromising position. Stuck between Jack and a blond man who she did not recognize. Who was he? The gears in her tired, aching mind churned. This time no flurry of defragmented memories rose, a small mercy.

“Are you okay now?” The blond man asked. He cupped her face with his large hands, almost gently searching her face. He had no idea why she had been in the med bay but he wasn’t going to not anything let her lapse or harm her. Perhaps that way he could get about easing that guilt towards the Doctor that gnawed at him. “Let me know if you feel tired or in pain.”

“She’s fine. Owen checked her when she was still asleep.”

“Like I’d trust your primitive technology.” Koschei scoffed at Jack. “Do you understand Sorley? I don’t care if Jack here has to carry you until he passes out from exhaustion. He can just resurrect again and carry you all over again.”

“Yes, like you pulled me in front of you to die for you two…” Jack drawled.

“It’s not like you’ll actually die.”

“I’m sorry…” she started, her voice catching on her throat at the sight of his piercing brown eyes. A flash of fear slithered down her spine. Pressing herself against Jack, she allowed Jack to envelop in his comforting embrace. “Who... are… you?” her voice quivering. Somewhere in her head, was a memory of excruciating pain. He had hurt her.

“It’s okay Sweetheart,” Jack said. He rubbed slow circles on her back. “He’s a good guy now. You’re safe with us.” He leaned in, pressing a kiss on her temple. “Remember? He’s the Master, he helped to save Earth.”

Koschei flinched at the name. “It’s Koschei not the Master anymore.”

“Yes. It’s Koschei now. Good guy Koschei. You remember that?”

She shook his head. “He… hurt me.” She pressed a hand to her temple. “I—“

“I couldn’t have hurt you. It’s the first time I met you.” Koschei interrupted quickly. He pushed himself up, dusting the sand away from his clothes. “First time I met you, we ended up in Cardiff. Now here.”

He gave her a long questioningly look. Her eyes were turned away from him. He had no idea why she was so afraid of him. Who was she? He wasn’t going to brush the coincidental “landing in somewhere else every time he was with her” away that easily.

Jack, still rubbing the slow circles on her back, gave him an understanding look. “Don’t worry Sorley. He’s not going to hurt you. That was a long ago.”

“Was it?” she asked. “It… doesn’t feel like it belongs to me, the memory.”

He sighed. “You’re still young in your timeline. It’ll make sense one day.” He pressed another kiss on her temple, pulling her up to her feet. “So where are we?” Jack asked, brushing the sand from his trench coat.

“Merhalapa, Centaurus constellation, 950,853 million light years from Earth. The entity might be still here. We’ll need to find shelter and a way back.”

Brilliant cinders floated into the dusky sky. The sky glowed red, lit by the five crimson moons. Koschei recognized this place. It had been one of the first places he had gone to after running from Gallifrey. The Doctor and his granddaughter Susan had chased him there too. It was the exact place. He knew those ruins. A bittersweet memory. The memory of being him firmly himself here, making the Doctor remember the promise to stop him.

Koschei crouched, examining the sand. It was finely worn and very dry. There was not even the slightest bit of dampness in the sand or air. “Haven’t been here for 2000 years. It’s so much drier than I remember it to be. That can’t be correct. Merhalapa is known to for their waters and forests.”

They looked around them. “Water? I see sand. Lots of sand. Like desert.” Jack remarked to Sorley.

“That’s not right. There wasn’t a point in history where they had deserts. Oh.” Koschei pulled Sorley close to them. “Jack, do you still have your vortex manipulator?”

“Yes, why? It’s not working. The Doctor sonicked it to…”

Koschei pulled Jack’s wrist over, flipping it open. “Damn that Doctor. He fried the circuits.” He jabbed the buttons in a frenzied manner.

“Clearly the perchance of trouble is a race thing,” Sorley mumbled.

Jack searched Koschei’s face, his misgivings shooting up as he took in the worried look on his face. “What’s going on Koschei?”

“We’re in the 207th century. They have an agency that detains anything non-local. They think it gives them the rights to do anything. They love time travellers especially. This is the century where they finally joined the time travel race. Which means don’t ever open your vortex manipulator if you want to go home. Don’t even let them know what your device actually does. Pay attention.” He tugged Sorley’s arm, pulling her out of her thoughts. “We were in orbit around Earth and were going to land when we fell in to a cavity that suddenly appeared in space. Got that?”

They nodded. If Sorley was a slightest bit scared previously, it couldn’t be compared to the terror that ran through her now. For some inexplicable reason, she felt that if the Master– no, Koschei now, was scared of anything, she should be very scared of it. She could feel the tension escalate as they heard an odd buzzing sound.

“What’s that?” she asked quietly, this time gladly leaning close to the two men.

“It’s a teleporter,” Koschei replied. Aureate light blobs began to hover around them, multiplying, vibrating even faster. Sorley squeaked as her hand began to disappear. She turned wide-eyed to Jack. He merely shrugged. There was nothing he could do for he too was starting to disappear. “Stay calm and it’ll be over before you know it,” Jack instructed. The blinding blue light overwhelmed her vision.

All she felt was the darkness, the darkness that was unlike her dreams that were comforting. It was the darkness that was absent of everything. No light. No sound. She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t breathe. She was numb, frozen in that slice of moment. Then the darkness melted into a melange of colours; floundering, searching for their right shades, so to speak. The brilliant shade of blue flushed the almost psychedelic colours away and everything turned back to normal.

Sorley gave a half scream, stepping away quickly from where she had landed. Her body slammed into something hard behind her. A man. No. An alien. He. She. It peered down at her or it seemed to peer at her. It wasn’t the eyes that freaked her out at the first glance, it was the lack of eyes and the two very long odd eyebrows. And the hair. Dear god, it was everywhere. It wasn’t just the hair, it was a freaking humanoid terrier dog.

She cleared her throat several times. Her voice was slightly higher than she liked it to be. “Woof?” Why had she said the first thing that popped through her mind?

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

“Name?”

“Koschei”

“Planet of Origin?”

“Dulkis.”

The officer paused in his note taking. “Never heard of one before.”

Koschei found himself hard pressed to not roll his eyes at the Halapians. “Most of other Dulcians were boring and unadventurous. I wouldn’t be surprised if no one ever heard of us. Merciful stars! We wouldn’t even be here if we hadn’t crashed here. Just let us repair and leave.”

“We did not detect your ship enter your orbit. Where is your ship?”

“There was a sudden cavity in mid flight. Our ship fell into it and then we landed up here. We were in orbit around Sol Three, Galaxia Kyklos before we ended up here. Jack’s a terrible pilot. Should have been flying it instead.” Koschei clasped his hands together, his eyes drawn together in guilt. “Sorley’s mum is going to be so mad.” He sighed loudly.

“Do you even know how to get back?”

As long as Jack and Sorley remembered and followed the story he told them, they would be out of this horrible institution and free to deliberate on actually getting home. There were stories in the history books about this time period for this galaxy. Koschei wasn’t going to let any of them be another statistic to it. He’d sooner hypnotise the guards and everyone that stood in his way of getting home than to be stuck here. His predilections towards using hypnotism so soon after what the Doctor made him shudder. Hypnotising reminded him too strongly of the drums.

“I am the smartest in my class back on Dulkis. I’m quite certain I’ll be able to figure it out. More importantly, where are my…friends?” He mentally cursed himself for stumbling over such a simple thing.

The officer had noticed. He sat up straighter, his eyes were studying Koschei’s face even more intently. Koschei pulled a sheepish face, offering an explanation before the officer could come up with some kind of conspiracy theory. “It’s a bit complicated.” He scratched the back of his neck then spread his arms out in order to mimic a hopeless expression.  “Jack’s infatuated with Sorley and stowed onto my ship. Sorley happens to be my cousin’s friend and asked for a lift back home. One thing led to another and we ended up travelling through space for maybe five years. Not really friends. More like… companions? Comrades?” He frowned at those words. “You can’t really… describe it. Anyway, it was the first time we managed to finally get back since we left Dulkis. Almost get back.”

The officer nodded in sympathetically. “How long do you think you’ll take to repair your ship?”

Koschei forced a small smile which he hoped was something in-between a worry and a hopeful smile. Oh, humans and Halapians emotions were so complicated. Excessively complicated. “We didn’t get to see the ship. We woke up away from the ship. No idea where it is or what shape it is in. Could be anything from an hour to weeks,” he replied, careful to use humans’ and dulcians’ measurement of time. It would not be good for them if he roused their suspicions.

The officer regarded him with some interest. OH dear bleeding Death, why did he get the officer that was so paranoid. Koschei bitterly hoped the others were at least faring better than him.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

“All the hair. The amazing hair. Is it as silky as it looks?” Jack asked the officer in a mild flirtatious tone.

“Jack! Please. Focus,” The officer chided. His breath hitched as Jack began to stroke the officer’s fur. A low growl purred from the officer as he leaned into Jack’s touch.

“Sorry,” Jack said, pulling his hand away.

“No. Don’t stop!” The officer whined and moved closer to Jack.

“Couldn’t resist. Was too smooth for me to not touch it.” Jack began to rub the officer’s ears and the loud repetitive thumping of the officer’s leg on the floor echoed in the small interrogation room.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

She sees in her dreams. Watching, watched. The stars expand and ebb. They swirl in a lazy manner. She sees time in all its entirety something that mere four dimensional beings are incapable of understanding. Her thief sees a fraction of it. He sees all that is, all that was, all that ever could be. His genetic code allows him to see portions of it at a time, to hide himself from seeing it. Her thief chooses to hide it. He doesn’t like knowing everything.

She smiles. Smiles as an eleventh dimension being can. She sees herself burning, she sees herself dying. Giving herself up for something that can, could be, will be so much more. The Moment has promised her this.

Her thief will reject her gift. He cannot understand it. How can something be so mortal yet immortal at the same time? So perfect yet imperfect, an impossible existence.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Since she started travelling with the Doctor, Sorley had given up on any possibility in a normal situation. Actually, her definition of ‘a normal situation’ was stretched very far out now. One such example was the current situation she was in. Handcuffed to a metal table that seemed welded to the floor was something all in a day’s work of travelling with the Doctor. Sorley banged her head against the table. The only thing that made this situation a fractionally worse was that she was stuck on this planet with Jack and the blond man and no Doctor.

‘ _Come on. Think Sorley! There has to be a way out.’_

She tugged at the handcuffs. The metal felt sturdy. She tugged it another time. This time surrendering to the futility of her situation, Sorley pressed her head against the cold metal table. Her body was still throbbing since she woke up. She couldn’t figure out why. Vaguely, she remembered being in Shan Shen with Donna and the Doctor, those were her most recent memories.  She just wanted to curl in her bed and not move until her body stopped with the aching.

“I want to go home,” she mumbled. Was it the home that had Thomas, her mum and the dog that she didn’t remember was called what or was it the Tardis, Sorley couldn’t really tell. She had lost track of the time she had spent travelling on the Tardis. Travelling on the Tardis had that effect on people apparently according to Donna.

“Hello Sorley.”

Sorley whirled up startled. She hadn’t heard anyone entering the room. The old man with the bushiest eyebrows quirked an eyebrow at her.

“Oh so it’s that future you that do not remember me yet. This is interesting.” He steeped his fingers. His eyes taking in every detail of her. “I didn’t think I’d see you so young. Right. Let’s get ready then.”

She flinched as his hand reached for hers. “Sorley…” his light green eyes softened. “I’ll never hurt you.”

“Who are you then? How did you get in?”

Her handcuffs opened with an audible snap. How had he opened her handcuffs? He had nothing on his hands. It was like… magic. He smiled and pushed her right beside the door. “Spoilers. Now you’ll need to go northwest 2726/921 - Red. Though the garden. Past the waterfall. There’s a cave. You’ll find what you need. Here they come.”

The door snapped open. It really did snap open – into half. Jack stood at the door, his boot half in the air. “Hey there Sweetheart. Oh good, you’re ready. Let’s roll.”

Sorley scanned the room for the man but he was gone. “There was a man!” she blurted out, her feet trotting rapidly to keep up with the two men’s large strides. She could barely hear herself over the blaring sirens; it didn’t need a genius to deduce that they were caused by the two men.

“There’s always a man,” Jack commented. “Why is it never me?”

“No I mean, there really was a man in the room. He opened my cuffs.” 

They shot her a look as they reached a hatch. “Like a man man? Or a male Halapian?” Koschei asked.

“Man man.”

 Jack opened it up and Koschei slid into the vents first followed closely by Sorley. The need for silence forced her from pushing her questions onto them. How did the man enter the room then leave without a trace? Sorley puzzled over it but found no answers. He knew her. She wasn’t even going to question how. Considering she was a time traveller now, it was probably because she met him in her future. He did however say ‘remember me yet’.

They stopped at another hatch. Koschei opened and slid out. It was a room. Not just any room, a room filled with complicated looking computer consoles. They reminded Sorley of the console room. She circled the room, running a finger down.

“What is it Koschei? Can we use it to get out?” Jack asked urgently.

He sat down pressing several buttons, all the time eyeing the strange metal ring in the centre. “It’s a teleporter. These consoles man it.” Koschei explained. He pressed more buttons experimentally. Several indicator lights lit up.

“Any time now,” Jack remarked.

Sorley pursed her lips at one of the keyboards. A strange feeling overcame her, her fingers were tingling. “Sorley…? What are you doing?” Koschei asked in a tone of caution. “Sorley!”

She started mechanically pressing the buttons, her fingers making the clicky-clatty sound on the large keyboard. A humming sound reverberated from the ring in the centre. She spun the dial and slammed her hand on a blue button.

This time she was ready for it. The blue light overwhelmed their visions and they were gone.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

“What have you done?” Koschei demanded the moment they landed. They were for now out of reach from the authorities, in a garden that was in a city that he had no idea where. They were definitely still on Merhalapa judging by the stray people on the street. The sky was no longer as deep red as it was when they first arrived. Eight hours and forty-five minutes had passed since they had arrived on Merhalapa. They were now approaching dawn. Hiding in the day would be very difficult.  As strangers on this world, they stood out starkly from the hairy natives. Koschei had no way of telling how far their would-be pursuers were. He had no idea what settings she had used. Though it might have taken him a moment to figure how to use it, but it would have been so much better if she had let him do it. He glowered at her. She had used the console with the speed of a practised engineer. There was no way he could have competed with that. They were likely to have been caught before he could have figured how to activate the teleporter but he was not going to tell the human girl that she did really save them.

“There was a man,” she said. Her eyes searching their surroundings for the waterfall. She was uncomfortable in his presence. Koschei realized it, his eyes picking up the subtle signs. It was something he was used to seeing.  Humans were always uncomfortable being with him. He reminded himself that those times, he had been plotting to take over the universe. He averted his eyes.

“A man,” he deadpanned, giving her a suffering sigh. He glanced at Jack who seemed hardly surprised at what she had done. “You don’t seem surprised. Did you know she would do this?”

“No, but I do know her for a long time. Much longer than you can imagine.” Jack gave him a smug smile. “Her unpredictability to get me out of situations is something rather predictable.”

“Well the man gave me some… coordinates. This is weird. How did I know that? How did I know that they were coordinates? More importantly how _did_ we get here?” She half yelled pointing at the ground.

“You teleported us here?” Jack replied though it was more of a question than a statement.

“You followed a strange man’s coordinates.” Koschei repeated. He stared at her. How did the Doctor ever stand these humans?

“Well in my defence, he was not strange. Apart from him being strangely.. familiar. He gave me some instructions too. Through the garden. Past the waterfall there’s a cave.”

“We’re _not_ following some strange man’s instructions. We need to figure how we got here and get out of here.” Koschei said. The more she spoke, the more annoyed he got. At least while at the institute, he had a rough gauge of where they were. He could have mapped their way back to their original arrival point and found the device that had gotten them here.

He pushed passed them and stalked away from them. The cliffs jugged high out and up above the ground. They were so steep and tall that it looked like they could reach the red dusky sky. So immensely tall that it seemed impossible that they had not noticed it. Koschei took several steps back, stumbling into them.

“Koschei?” Jack said puzzled.

Koschei took a step forward again, then back. It was a perception filter. There was a perception filter all over the mountain. How was that achievable? The amount of energy it must have taken to make such a filter.

“The waterfall has a perception filter,” he breathed in awe. The amount of engineering to create and maintain such a large filter was almost nothing sort of a genius. Admittedly, a perception filter was not terribly difficult with Gallifreyan tools but to maintain it, it must have some sort of energy convertor. “It’s astounding.”

Water rushed down the steep cliffs looking more like white curtains over a darkened window. Koschei trailed his hand over the dark granite cliff. There had to be a way of getting past the waterfall. That was when he saw it. He hadn’t expected it. They were the last two Time Lords left. Yet here sitting so innocently was an unmistakable Time Lord sign. No one else but another Time Lord would have been able to differentiate it. He turned the rock three times as the sign instructed and pressed it down.

The water parted, exposing a small tunnel just barely tall enough for them to walk through. Koschei had been very inclined to walk away just ten minutes ago. The gallifreyan engineering, the small hidden gallifreyan instruction, Koschei found himself unable to abandon it. He had to find out if there were any more of them or probably the Doctor and him from the future. Most likely so.

The trio shuffled into the tunnel and the white curtain of water merged back. There was no darkness contrary to Sorley’s assumptions. The floor was patterned with pale luminous stone.

“It’s Yumor stone. Not hard to find but is hard to achieve the luminous effect. There are probably better ways to light a tunnel. I suppose Yumor stone is energy effective. It sub-exists on tetra energy residual which is produced by the perception filter.” Koschei paused in his explanation. “Oh that’s very clever. Whoever who built this used the Yumor stone to mask the tetra energy output levels to make it not detectable by any conventional equipment.”

“He sounds like the Doctor when he talks like that,” Jack grinned at Sorley who smiled weakly back.

The tunnel gave way to a large circular chamber. This time not just the floor but the ceilings and walls were patterned in Yumor stone, casting an eerie greenish-white glow onto everything. There were shelves with various jars, a rack of weapons that were oddly 51st century human weaponry and several boxes of miscellaneous tech stuff.

“I definitely helped to build this sometime in the future…” Koschei mumbled. There was a laser screwdriver just on the side of the workstations. It was undoubtedly something he would have built. He swivelled around to Sorley. “The man. How did he look like?”

She shrugged, flinching at the pain that surged through her when she moved her body. “Whitish brown curly hair, bushiest eyebrows I’ve ever seen. Green eyes. Old man. Probably late fifties.”

She had flinched when she shrugged. Was she in pain? Koschei fiddled with his newly acquired laser screwdriver, scanning her. It was nothing like he had ever seen on a human. Chronon, huon, artron and even helix! Fluctuating but always in perfect balance. There was nothing innately wrong with her, her human body was perfectly fine apart from exhaustion.

“What are you?”

Sorley frowned. “What? What am I?”

“She’s Sorley Morin.” Jack came up behind him. There was a rifle slung across his shoulder and another large blaster in his hand. “They got my favourite sonic blaster too. It’s like my dream come true.” He caressed the sonic blaster.

“She can’t be human. A human can’t have helix energy.” Koschei shook his head. “No, a human can’t carry this kind of energy and live. It’s impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible. Just highly unlikely,” Sorley snapped. Where did that line come from? It felt so familiar.

Jack chuckled. “That’s my girl!”

“Are you two a couple?”

“I wish. She’s rejected me far too many times,” Jack gloomily replied. He pulled the Time Lord aside, quietly speaking. “Her program is still running.”

“You keep talking about _her program._ What program are we talking about? Why does she have a program?”

“I can’t tell you.”He glanced at the ginger girl. “I have very specific orders from future you that I can’t tell you.”

“You know me and trust me apparently. Why? I… I killed you so many times on the valiant.”

The smile Jack returned was tight-lipped. “Maybe so but the future you made up for it.”

“That’s it? You’re forgiving me?” The Time Lord was bewildered by the human’s forgiveness.

“So as long as you remember I’m going to punch you every time I see you.” This time Jack’s smile was more genuine. He chucked one of the jars into the bag he had found, inspecting each jar closely.

“Jack? Uhm.. Koschei right?” She twiddled her thumbs nervously. “I think I found another tunnel.”


	13. Only human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Koschei finds out what Sorley is.

The rock that branched from the circular clearing was vastly different. It was less of 'someone had taken a laser and chiseled everything uniformly' and more of a normal rock near water spaces sort of tunnel. Somewhere down the tunnel, the uniformly carved ground, tiled with eerie yumor stone gave way to jutting, steep black rock, rock so black and dense that it seemed to leech the light out of the yumor stone. There was a coarse crunching sound beneath their shoes while they transverse though the tunnel with only the yumor stone in Sorley's hand and a poor excuse of a torch in Jack's.

They had been walking in complete silence for an indefinite amount of time when Jack finally remarked, "The walls are gross."

"Yes they are," Sorley agreed. She had some time back brushed against the wall with her hand and finding it come away slimy and sticky. It didn't burn and apart from the sticky slimy feeling, it didn't seem to be hazardous so she had not seen a point of mentioning it. Her body was demanding her to take a rest. There was a growing numbness in her calves for an undeterminable time ago and a low achy feeling in her back, all that on top of her throbbing body. She pushed the exhaustion to the back of her mind, concentrating on the movement of her feet and the sound of the gravel. She couldn't stop for rest that much she knew. The moment she sat down, she would fall asleep and it'd be awhile before she woke.

So wrapped up in hobbling on, she did not feel Jack wrap an arm around her waist and gently herded her to a stop. "You can stop now sweetheart," he said.

Sorley looked up. In her daze, she had not noticed that the tunnel and branched out into an underground lake. There was a small opening in the ceiling. Light filtered from the tiny hole, causing the lake to appear to have a strange incandescent light blue thing slithering in it.

"An underground lake…" Jack commented quietly. Even his quiet words was picked up by the earth and amplified.

Behind them, Sorley could vaguely hear the sound of crunching. Jack stood beside her, letting her lean against him. His arm wound round her waist and from an outsider's point of view, it seemed romantic, the truth was he was holding her up. Her feet felt like jelly. Her insiders quavered violently. She gripped the back of his shirt muttering, "how cliché."

"Cliché?" Jack asked. She didn't need to look up to guess that he was looking at her with a quirked eyebrow and a smug smile. Somehow she had known that he would have reacted that way. Having fragmented memories was better than having none, Sorley guessed. "I suppose it could be cliché. A secret cave with an underground lake." Jack pulled his phone out, dialing for Torchwood.

"Universal roaming," he explained at her quizzical look.

_The number you've dialed is currently not in service._

He pursed his lips, giving his phone an odd look. "That's interesting… Did I reach the wrong year?"

"No," Koschei replied. He joined at the edge of the lake. In his hands was an odd object. It must have been something he had built from the box parts that was in the room. Jack eyed the object.

"Is that a nexial tracer? I see stablisers and a dematerialization circuit." Jack peered at it.

"You know surprisingly a lot for a human."

"A 51st century ex-time agent human," Jack corrected him. "Plus I spent a lot of time… er.. spoilers. Would it have been easier if you just fixed my vm?"

"The Doctor deactivated the vortex visualizer with a security code and also fried the neuron circuit. It would take me hours to crack it then fix it and right now we don't have hours." Koschei pulled Jack's vortex manipulator up and waving his screwdriver at it. A holographic map actualized above the vortex manipulator. "See this is where we are and this…" he punched several buttons rapidly. "Are the Halapian ST agents."

Three blue dots followed by a swarming of yellow dots appeared on the 3D map.

"ST agents?" Sorley asked.

"Space Travel agents. Once they find out that you're not from this century and that I'm a Time Lord, we'll be wishing that we're dead." Koschei explained dismissively. He kept an eye on the holographic map while working on the object, bleeping his laser screwdriver at it. "Coordinates…" He licked his finger and held it up in the air. "We're too far underground. We need to go out."

He waded into the water and looked back at the duo, realizing that neither of them had made a move to join him. "We don't have a choice." Koschei motioned to the dots on the holographic map then turning the map off with a flash of his screwdriver. "We have forty minutes to try to get out of here. I assure you, I really did mean that we'll be wishing that we're dead once they find out the truth. A man that can't die, a girl from the 21st century and a time lord. It'd be like…" he searched his mind for an appropriate analogy. "Christmas for them. Yes, that'd be a good description."

Koschei was asking a lot from the girl. She had been flinching from pain and now she was barely standing. There was no other way. He couldn't risk typing random coordinates into the makeshift vortex manipulator. The machine was volatile as it is. It was too much of a risk for all of them. The burn of guilt in his stomach was growing. Being the time sensitive race of the trio, he should have realized it earlier that they weren't just displaced in time and space; they were displaced outside their universe. It was a pocket universe and wouldn't require as much power to return to their universe but the box of parts hadn't had the require components. He needed to get the coordinates for Earth in this universe to buy them freedom for him to dismantle the immortal's vortex manipulator.

"Don't worry, I won't let you die," Jack said quietly to Sorley.

She nodded mutely at his words and took a shaky step into the water. The water was warm. Sorley shouldn't have been surprised at it being warm. It was a blistering desert outside, the chances of underground water being warm was high. Jack's arm that had been wrapped around her waist loosely now grabbed her tightly. She wrapped her left arm around his waist, desperately trying to assist. Her muscles had gone from throbbing to a screaming pain. How long had they been swimming? It felt like forever. She gasped, her hands clutching Jack's heavy jacket. Why hadn't he removed it? Wasn't it heavy? Her mind asked, trying to distract her from her grumbling body.

"Hold your breath, it's an underwater tunnel up ahead. Not too far," said Koschei from somewhere not too far ahead of them. The miserable lighting from the tiny hole in the ceiling had been long gone, leaving them to plough ahead in the darkness.

There was a loud splash and then silence. Koschei must have gone ahead. She could feel a tendril of panic grow in her. Was the tunnel wide enough? She wasn't going to make it on her own. She wouldn't even have made it this far had it not been for Jack carrying her along.

"Sorley, I'm going to need you to wrap your legs around me and hold your breath. I can't swim us through with your legs in the way." She nodded, then belatedly realizing he couldn't see it in the darkness.

"Sorry."

"It's okay sweetheart." His hands shifted her so that she could wrap her legs around his back. Young Sorley would have been terribly embarrassed by the very awkward position they were in now. "If it helps you feel any better, we've done this way more times in my past and your future. And when I mean this, I really mean this." His hands found her bum and he gave it a squeeze. She spluttered the way he knew she would. How he loved to tease her. At least she was more relaxed now. Mission accomplished. "Ready?" He asked more seriously this time.

She stuck her chin onto his shoulder, gripping his torso with all she could. "Allons-y."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Moments just after Koschei pulled himself out of the water, he came eye to eye with a fast moving blade. He ducked, hastily protecting the device. Dropping into a sideways roll, he brought up his laser screwdriver and aimed it at whatever that attacked him. It missed. He had barely caught a breath before hearing the whizzing of the blade on his right. He sidestepped at the last moment, spinning around to view his assailant.  _Adam_  stumbled forward. In that moment, Koschei struck twice; slamming Adam's elbow and knocking the knife out of his hands, and then throwing  _Adam_  onto the sandy banks with a roundhouse kick. He dug his foot into  _Adam's_  stomach.

"What do we have here?" he sneered at _Adam_. "Not a time lord I'd say."

_Adam_  growled at him and spat at him, the dribble of saliva making its way down Koschei's cheek. "You made me this way!"

"I beg to differ. I had nothing to do with…  _you._  I don't have time for this either." Koschei turned to his device, still keeping the pressure on  _Adam's_  stomach, forcing him to lie on the sandy bank. Perhaps he should unravel the creature. Koschei glanced at him. The creaturehad been once a Time Lord but he certainly wasn't one now. He didn't think it was possible that of all the things to survive the last Great Time War, it would have been this. He sighed. "Look. I don't really know why you're attacking me and truthfully, I don't really want to kill you. Truce?"

"Like hell I would!"  _Adam_  dug his claws into Koschei's ankle and ripped it. In one fluid movement, he leapt into the air, launching himself at Koschei's throat. They fell. The device bounced away onto the ground, forgotten in the flurry of movement. Koschei brought his elbow up as they fell, letting gravity smash  _Adam's_  nose. He jerked away, his hands reflexively clutching his bleeding nose. Left with no choice, Koschei reached up to grab  _Adam's_  neck. If he left him alive, he would kill them all.  _Adam_  bared his rather long and pointy canines at Koschei and disappeared, leaving Koschei to only grasp the empty air.

He got up. Six hours and eighteen minutes had passed since they escaped from the institute. Picking the device up again, Koschei glanced at the sky. It was what passed as noon for Merhalapa now. Noon. At least it'd be warm enough that the humans wouldn't be in risk of catching a cold. Human bodies were so fragile and demanding. He returned to his task: getting Earth's coordinates and fixing the makeshift vortex manipulator to bring them to Earth.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The both of them were wheezing when Jack finally surfaced. Sorley drank the air greedily, flopping onto the bank beside Jack. She shook herself, struggling into a sitting position.

"Rest Sorley," Jack said. "I've got you."

"Can't." Sorley was too tired to form actual words. Instead, she let her brain respond instinctively, not even understanding half of the things she was saying. "Woke too early. Will sleep long if I rest now." Her eyes were already half-closed, her body leaning against Jack.

"It's water-logged," Koschei mournfully answered the unasked question.

Jack let out a half-chuckle. It had been carried through two hours of swimming. If it wasn't water-logged, he would have been extremely surprised. He was far too tired to contribute a proper response.

Koschei waved his screwdriver at his vortex manipulator. The holographic map with the moving dots appeared once again. This time they were converging somewhere else not too far but not close enough to require them to move immediately.

"We can stay for fifteen minutes. Our  _friend_ Adam has provided a nice bait." Despite having hauled a device through water that was equally bulky as Sorley was, Koschei wasn't as tired as Jack. He was a time lord who had endurance outstripping the immortal human's capabilities. "I'll let you know when we have to move," he reassured the human. Jack nodded and drifted off.

Koschei continued taking the components apart allowing the parts to drip dry before reassembling it. It appeared that  _Adam_  had been a far better bait that he had imagined. The dots had drifted further away from them during those fifteen minutes and the fifteen minutes stretched to forty-five minutes before the time lord had to shake Jack and Sorley awake. He was not surprised that no amount of shaking had roused the sleeping girl.

"I suppose it has to do with her program still running. It's draining on her batteries." Jack offered an explanation. He allowed Koschei to carry Sorley across his shoulders while he carried the device. "I thought this would be lighter." Jack looked at the makeshift vortex manipulator. "It's almost as heavy as Sorley."

"It's the inertial boosters. It's a type 45 inertial booster, heavier than the newer type 201c."

"Where are we going? I thought you said we just needed go out."

"The boosters don't have enough power to enter the vortex. We need to… Oh." Koschei stopped in the middle of the bush that they have been trekking through. "We can use Sorley."

"Wait what?" Jack stilled Koschei's action. "What are you planning to do?"

"Her program is running. She is emitting chronon, huon, artron and helix energy. I can siphon that energy and divert it to the nano-emulsion modulator thus reignite the aft plasmatic generator, creating a boost to the inertial boosters. This will enable the photonic cells to concentrate on the dematerialization circuit, allowing us to safely materialize onto earth. Is that alright?"

"Yes all-" Jack shoved Koschei aside. A pole pierced through Jack's chest. He coughed, tugging the pole out then falling dead onto the ground. Koschei dropped Sorley onto the ground, quickly kicking the vortex manipulator under a bush.

"Hello  _Adam._ " Koschei's brown eyes bore into the shape-shifting entity before him.

"Don't  _Adam_  me now. I rather dislike the name. The Professor calls me Saya. I've become rather fond of it."

"Saya's a girl's name."

Adam or rather Saya shifted into a cute girl. "I'm a girl." She smirked. Her body blurred at the edges. This time she shifted into an identical copy of Jack. "Oh this is interesting. I can't shift into your friend. She doesn't exist." Jack clasped his hands. There was an oddly sinister look on his face. "I have a proposition for you. I won't kill her or kidnap her if you take me with you out of this pocket dimension."

"And why should I do that when I can kill you so easily?"

"Really?" He morphed into a familiar form. "The Master can kill poor little me?"

Koschei found himself unable to avert his eyes from the Ailla imitation. A surge of anger and distorted love bubbled beneath his confused demeanor. Ailla, the one person that had held the drums back; it was with her death then her betrayal and the horror of him murdering a whole planet that tipped the scales.

"No?" Saya blinked at him with those large brown eyes. "How about…" Her shape shifted again, this time to Lucy Saxon.

He stumbled backwards, the sense of grief and guilt overwhelming him. "I'm sorry… I didn't-"

"Oh? Looks like I have a winner." Saya/Lucy took a step towards Koschei. "What do you say?" She raised her eyebrows with a grin as she pulled Sorley up by her hair. "Yes or no?

Suddenly, Sorley's hand sprung up, grabbing onto Saya/Lucy's throat. There was a loud crack. Sorley dropped the limp body her lips curling with disgust. "No thank you."

She quirked at eyebrow at him. "Are you practicing to be a goldfish?"

"What just happened?"

"She attacked me, I killed her." Sorley placed a hand on her temple. "Annoying. Shut up! Sorry just the rattling in my head."

"What's rattling in your head?"

"Her. Her memories." She looked abnormally spiteful. Koschei couldn't help but think how misplaced it looked. "It's all jumbled. It's weird. I don't like her."

"Who's her?"

They should have expected it from an undying entity. Saya/Lucy raised, throwing a high kick at Sorley. Sorley sidestepped, the wind from Saya/Lucy's kick ruffling her hair. Saya/Lucy glowered at her. "Well well. The human knows how to fight. Surprise, surprise. Very surprised."

"Oh I can do more than that." Sorley scoffed. Not waiting for a reply, she dashed forward. She deflected the entity's punch. Her elbow connecting onto Saya/Lucy's shoulder. She spun around, delivering a hoof kick followed by a side kick from her other foot. Saya/Lucy reeled backwards, her arms moving up to protect her head. Saya/Lucy grabbed Sorley's foot in mid-air and flung her onto the floor. She grunted, her hands pivoting off the floor before the rest of her body made it to the ground. They came to a standstill, each eyeing the other.

"Sorley Morin, the girl that doesn't exist."

"I'm pretty sure I exist." Sorley motioned to the marvelously blossoming bruise on the entity's face. "Your face proves it so."

"Oh yes. But you're not naturally made. They made you. Even I am more natural than you." Saya/Lucy laughed hysterically.

The two females had forgotten the time lord. He was mildly relieved by it. The image of Lucy was too fresh for him. She was the last victim that he had tried desperately to save. The last one that died by his hands. He spun his laser screwdriver. Should he be worried about this memories Sorley had been talking about? He zapped the entity with his laser screwdriver. It was dead for now again.

Jack got up groaning. He hated it when his heart had to regrow.

"I didn't know you could fight like that," Koschei commented.

"I didn't know either." Sorley looked at her hands bewildered. "She's jangling about in there. All the equations, the things she know. It's… so weird. She was a mathematician. Some kind of martial artist, to-"

"Totally like a Mary Sue." Jack finished the sentence with a smile.

"You know her?"

He shrugged. "You talked about… her," They had separated her personality into different parts to allow easier assimilation when she was ready. Was she starting to assimilate already? Jack watched her closely. He blasted Saya/Lucy again. It had started twitching back to life and would be moments before it came fully alive.

"Koschei?" Jack lifted his eyebrows at the time lord. The time lord was already on it.

"Five minutes." Koschei pointed his laser screwdriver at the makeshift vortex manipulator then at Sorley. He motioned her to come closer. "I'm just going to use the energy you're emitting to boost the vortex manipulator. It won't affect you but it might feel weird."

She nodded.

"Okay. I've inputted the coordinates, set for Mutter's Spiral, Sector 8023, Sol three, 21st century. Jack grab here." He whirred the screwdriver at the makeshift vortex. Jack placed his hand where the time lord had indicated. "Grab here, Sorley."

"You're not leaving without me," a deep growl came. It morphed into a huge dragon, spearing its large claws into Sorley. Blood gushed from the large gaping hole. "I'm going to fulfill my modus operandi if that's the only two choices I have."

"Sorley!" Koschei zapped Saya with his laser screwdriver. His heart lurched as he saw the large gaping hole. "No!"

Saya evaded the laser screwdriver. She laughed mockingly. His aim was wild and frantic. He wasn't going to be able to kill her this way. With a great swipe of her tail, she threw him far into the bushes. She placed her clawed foot on Sorley's limp body. Blood was everywhere.

Jack pulled his sonic blaster out, shooting rapidly at Saya. He was all too calm and collected for a person who just had someone they know die in front of them. Judging from their reactions, she would have assumed that the two were more than just friends, probably lovers, probably more than that. Saya sidestepped his shots. Oh yes. He was outwardly calm but his pupils were dilated. His shots were unbridled, almost wild like Koschei's.

"It's a mask!" she laughed, dancing about him. "What was she to you?"

She materialized behind him, whispering into his ear. "Was she a lover? OH nononono." She snickered. "She's far more than that. So tell me and I'll spare you agony."

Jack stared at her. His heart was pounding painfully in his chest. He felt like his world had closed up. Was he alone again? She had told him that she had seen him far beyond now, millions of years later.

"She's the only reason you live." Saya's face spilt into a venomous beam. "Too bad she's dead now."

"Oh yea? Feel this." He slipped the large rifle from his back, his fingers already flicking the safety catch off. Saya screamed as he emptied the large rounds into her stomach. He tossed the empty rifle, now emptying the sonic blaster into her. He choked on the chemical smell of the gun. It wasn't enough. She was still alive. She had morphed into something that was resilient to the sonic blaster. He would have probably been able to shoot more accurately if his head wasn't howling in sorrow.

She let out a blood-curling screech. This time it wasn't from Jack pumping the rounds into her. Koschei had managed to charge his energy and grab her. The screech turning into a high-pitched keening. Under her skin, the lambent light began to diffuse and overwhelm her, devouring her then she was gone. There was nothing left of her.

Jack turned to Sorley. She was still holding on. Her breath came in harsh, stuttering gasps. Her eyes were glazing over already. "Can you do anything?" Jack asked the time lord.

Koschei stood there, numbly watching Jack hold her. The damage was far too much for him to do anything. He crouched beside her, desperately trying to pull up his regeneration energy. His energy popped and fizzled.

She gasped, her eyes catching Jack. She opened her mouth, struggling to say something. Whatever Saya had tore out of her, she hadn't been able to get a breath. She closed her eyes, sighing a small sigh and her body fell still.

"She told me that she was with me for years to come." Jack said, taking a shuddering breath. She wasn't going to die right? He had seen her in the future.

"Time can be rewritten." Koschei said.

"But I've seen her in her future!"

Koschei didn't know what he should say or do. Comforting someone was always something the Doctor did. He dug his hands into his pocket, pressing his lips together in search for something to break the silence.

They had to go, they couldn't stay here, they needed to go high. Nothing mattered now. The makeshift vortex manipulator wasn't going to be able to take them out of the universe or out of this horrible planet. They were doomed. Even if by some miracle they made it out, the Doctor… Koschei didn't think he was capable of looking at the Doctor in his eye. The Doctor had entrusted him to keep his friend safe and he had failed him.

"Jack…" Koschei started. He opened his mouth to warn him about the approaching ST agents but suddenly felt like it was impossible to breathe. She was glowing. Sorley was glowing. Why was she glowing?

He staggered forward, ripping Jack from her. His screwdriver showing impossible readings from her. She was regenerating? She's a time lord? How was that possible?

"She's regenerating," Koschei breathed in stupefied apprehension. "Get back! She's regenerating!" He pushed Jack from her.

An incandescent light overtook her, wrapping her gently. He could see the organs reforming, the skin knitting itself back. They stood in mute wonder, watching the light do its work. Eventually it faded and her still body took a breath.

"How?" Koschei muttered. He flashed his screwdriver at her.

_Human._

She was a typical human again. No weird energy, no weird light. Nothing. Just a typical 21st century human. He ran his hand through his hair, staring at the results in deep thought.

"The program was still running, it hooked up to the watch." Jack ran his hand down his face. He dug through her pockets and tossed the pocket watch to the dumbfounded time lord.

Gallifreyan words were carved into it. It wasn't a name. It was an equation. An impossible equation, an equation that wouldn't have worked, shouldn't have worked. Yet it did. Did it? Koschei looked at the weary immortal. "How did you know of it?"

"She told me once. in passing. The watch acts as a receptacle."

"A receptacle to what?" he scanned the watch. "She's not a time lord. She's a… She's the…" His hands dropped. "This is impossible! It's not logical. We… we have to tell the Doctor. Does he know yet?"

He looked at Jack confused. He wanted to laugh in joy and weep in tears. Here, this human had proven the entire time lord race wrong. "We got it all wrong!" he laughed hysterically. "All wrong!" No she was still human, but if one included everything she could do once she came to power. The only thing that was human about her was the DNA. Her lifespan, her regenerating abilities. Nothing of her would be human anymore.

"We can't tell the Doctor. The Doctor has to find out for himself. You told me that. Future you. Sorley said the timelines converged. They shifted the timelines to converge on her."

"They? Who's they? Who could have so much power?"

Jack shrugged at his question. "Sorley only said  _they_."

She groaned and before she could even open her eyes, Jack hugged her tightly, placing a long kiss on her temple. "Jack?" She flailed. "Jack. Need air." She gasped.

The sound of a wheezing was heard. The blue box materialized in the middle of them. "Sorry I'm late. Engines was phasing. The Tardis had to rebuild. Then there was the Atraxi on earth and a prisoner. Need a ride?" The Doctor stopped his rambling at the sight of Sorley all covered in blood. "You're awake! And…" He waved his screwdriver at her, relieved that she was alright.

"I feel gross." She hung her arms out. Her clothes were drenched in blood. "Why am I covered in blood?"

"You…" Koschei exchanged looks with Jack. "The creature was trying to kill you and Jack shot it and its blood splattered on you."

The Doctor gave a look at the two men.

"207th century. Merhalapa. ST agents incoming. We need to go now." Koschei said urgently. He hurried to the console table, this time gingerly touching it. No sparks, no weird light this time. The Tardis hummed gently.

The Doctor gave a short nod and began the dematerialization process. Between the two time lords, the ride was a lot smoother even through the bubble and back into their world. Sorley excused herself to clean up.

"What really happened?" The Doctor asked. His voice was grim. He stared furiously at them. "Don't tell me that story again. I know that didn't happen. There was a hole in her dress. A large gaping hole where all the blood begun. What I think really happened is that she got fatally injured and that blood is hers."

Koschei made a quick decision and he nodded, drawing attention from Jack. "She almost died, I used my lindo packets to heal her. She probably forgot. You know how humans deal with trauma."

"What attacked you?"

"ST Agents…" he hesitated in telling the other was a time lord. No. it wasn't a time lord anymore. Anything that was a time lord had been disintegrated in it. "Just lots of ST agents…"

"Are you alright?" The Doctor asked. He gave the two men a look over. They seemed fine apart from exhaustion. The both of them had been crying. They were hiding something from him. The Doctor glanced at the hallway that Sorley had gone in.

"I'm… going to take a shower as well. Trekking in the water, trekking in the forest." Koschei made a face.

"Jack…" The Doctor begun gently. Dark green eyes meeting bright blue eyes. He looked away.

"Think I can get a ride back?" His face smiled widely, belying the war of emotions in his blue eyes.

The Doctor sighed, doing his little dance round the console. "Jack," he called out as Jack was about to leave the Tardis. "You can tell me anything you know."

Jack laughed. "There are some things that you have to experience to understand. See you later."

The door slammed behind him. Time to pick up Amy, the Doctor supposed. He glanced at the hallway, then pulled the dematerialization lever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some things I feel I need to point out. Jack and Sorley are not a couple. Sorley and Koschei are not and will never be a couple. There is some back story for Sorley & Jack. In fact it's a long and complicated, time-wimey story about the three of them – Koschei, Jack and Sorley. I may or may not write it as a drabble/ side story in the future or weave it in. I haven't decided.
> 
> We'll be skipping a lot of canon episodes now and having longer non-canon arcs.
> 
> Tell me if you liked or hated this chapter. Feedback is very much appreciated.


	14. Death of the Daleks

What happened? Had she died? Sorley wasn't that oblivious. She did have a tendency of acting oblivious that allowed people to underestimate her. The ginger girl looked back at her in the mirror. Her wet hair hung plastered to her body, her skin was very pale, far paler than she had remembered it to be. She was still Sorley. She was, wasn't she?

Oh the dying did that. The memories. They weren't churning and scrimmaging in her mind anymore. She was the old Sorley and the new Sorley. Two sets of memories overlapping. Contradicting and not. Familiar and not. Both at once and neither at all. Forming, melding, separating. Like emulsion. Tiny drops of oil dispersing by soap. The old and the new.

Emulsion.

Would that be the correct term? The old Sorley scoffed. The new Sorley was apparently a dunce. Memories weren't like drops of oil and soap. They were bits of data, copies of files or books, filed into large boxes, slotted and categorized. Everyone had a method of filing that was created and modded when they grew up. The new her didn't have the time to do so. Her filing was haphazard and thus created an illogical filing pattern.

"I am Sorley Morin," she said to no one. Her head pressed against the mirror. "I am Sorley Morin." She banged her head against the mirror. Who was she saying it to? Was it to the new Sorley or the old Sorley?

"I am Sorley Morin." She banged her head harder this time. Her voice wasn't a whisper anymore. It was a yell. Louder and louder, harder and harder. She repeated it over and over again.

"Sorley?" a voice called out tentatively.

She looked up from her reverie, startled. "Doctor?"

"Are you okay?" The Doctor entered the wardrobe hesitantly. When he saw her enter with all the blood, he felt his heart stop. There was some off about her. He didn't know what. He really didn't have much to go by in fact. She had been asleep for a year and three weeks. It's hard to remember what's a person was like when you hadn't interacted with them for that long. But something just wasn't right and no matter how much he tried to push it to the back of his mind, it nagged at him. He had to see if she was alright. That was went he heard her banging and almost yelling the same phrase over and over again. Was it the wall in her mind? Did it break?

He pulled a towel over her wet hair, gently rubbing it dry. "You're bleeding." He glanced at the broken mirror.

"I am Sorley Morin." She replied.

"Yes you are." He pulled her face up, his hands cupping her face. "Sorley? What's wrong?"

"Who am I? I am Sorley Morin. But I'm not. I'm not Sorley Morin."

"You are Sorley Morin. Twenty six years old. From an alternate universe. An older brother called Thomas Morin. You like stars and nebulas and apple juice. You think apples are the tastiest food on earth and the only thing that can make it better is a dash of cinnamon." He lightly touched the wound on her forehead. "Your favourite colour is sea green. Specifically 32, 178, 170."

"That's rubbish." Sorley looked at him with an odd look on her face. "My favourite colour is red. And I don't like stars." She bit her lip. "No that's not correct either."

"Are you remembering? I can help you. Me, I deal with it every time I regenerate." He paused in mid-thought. "You didn't seem surprised that I'm different."

"Thomas made me watch every beginning and ending of each series. I know you're the Eleventh. You look a bit different though." She looked thoughtfully. "The Eleventh on my TV had blonde hair with somewhat Asian looks. Droopy eyes they called him. Although why is there the Master?"

"Ah yes. The  _telly._ " He had planned to talk about it, although that was a year and three weeks ago. Right now all he wanted to do was hug her and take the Stars that she was finally awake. He didn't want to care about the telly thing.

"There was no Master. No." Sorley blinked. She stared at him intensely. "You're the Doctor."

He looked at her quizzical. This was a conversation that was very familiar. "Yes… I am the Doctor…. This is the Tardis."

"Why am I here? This was some kind of drama on the TV show. You're not supposed to be real." She pushed him away and ran into the hallway. "This isn't real. Why!? Why am I here!?"

"Sorley?" The Doctor chased after her. "Sorley? Calm down."

"Why am I here!?" She whirled to face him. "Why!?"

She wasn't crying, something the Doctor breathed in relief. He hated the idea of Sorley crying. "Calm down. What do you remember?" He said calmly.

"I was at home. No. I was going home. I had a fight with Tommy and he told me to walk home myself. Some guys tried to mug me and I beat the crap out of them. I saw Tommy waiting for me, then. Then. Then there was this light. What happened? I shouldn't be here! This place shouldn't even exist!"

"What's going on?" Koschei asked. He had been making tea in the kitchen when he heard Sorley's yelling.

She spun around to face him, appalled. "You're supposed to be in Gallifrey. Not here! You're not supposed to be here. The Time lines are skewered. They changed too much. Too much. Too much, too much, too much, too much, too much."

Koschei choked on his tea. "Sorley, calm down. Which Sorley are you?" Her panic stricken face fell expressionless all of a sudden and a calm stillness overtook her.

She blinked Koschei then at the Doctor who hovered nearby. "I am Sorley Morin. Is there any other Sorley?"

"No… but," he too glanced at the Doctor.

"No. There is more than one of me. I apologize for that disturbance. Would you see check my wound, Koschei?"Her voice was too calm, too expressionless.

"I can-" The Doctor started. Sorley waved him off.

"Amy's waiting for you in the console room. Her first trip is it not?"

He huffed. "Well I promised her a trip. Do you not want to come?"

"Well.. considering we just trekked in the water and in the jungle. I'm rather tired. I'll probably go to bed after Koschei takes a look at my wound. Perhaps the next one." Her face morphed into the relevant emotions as she explained.

The Doctor's face fell but he understood. She was only human after all. Humans seemed to sleep their lives away. "Well we're going to explore that giant UK ship and be back," he said reluctantly.

"I'll be around…" Koschei raised his mug of tea.

The Doctor rolled his eyes and went away.

The duo walked to the med-bay in silence. "You're not really Sorley, are you?" Koschei said as he pulled the healing lamp out. He had noticed the rather stiff expressions on her face, it was a clear tell-tale sign to him now that he knew exactly what she was.

"No. She needed some time to sort out between the two memories and I wanted to talk to you."

Koschei shook his head in disbelief. "I still can't believe it.." He motioned at the med bed. "I saw the equation. It shouldn't have worked. The binomial distribution was too dependent on too many variables. It would have collapsed. I know Rani attempted it. No one succeeded that way." His hands stilled in its work with the healing lamp. "That entity. He said you… she wasn't natural. Is that true?"

She laughed. "It depends on what you define as natural. I am as natural as it comes. But I am special."

"Will she ever know?"

Sorley nodded. "When she is done assimilating with the old and the new memories, she'll be ready for mine. Not too far from now in fact." She gazed blankly at the healing lamp.

"Koschei? You're not ready yet," she said carefully. She placed her hands over his two hearts. "You cannot leave the ship for too long. Right now, all you have is the vortex energy I gave you that is stabilizing you."

"You gave me the vortex energy? It was you! Why?"

"Without it, your body would have died three hours. We have changed the timelines far too much. There is no way of returning. The only way is to move forward. We need you to preserve the timelines. To save us all. Don't doubt yourself."

"What would I need to do?"

"The end of the beginning has passed, the beginning of the end has come. The skies will rise and the songs will echo. They've been lost a long time ago, never to return. Never can return."

"Do you always talk in riddles?"

"Do you always not listen?"

"Not listen?" Koschei repeated affronted.

"The answer is there."

They lapsed into silence with only the light buzzing from the healing lamp as Koschei roved it around the wound. The break in the skin was finally sealed up. When Koschei wiped the blood away, there was a light pink skin where the break had been. He frowned at the equipment. "I got my work cut out for me. This healing lamp is three centuries outdated."

Sorley chuckled. "Right, I'm going to head to bed."

He waved her away, still mulling over words and the archaic med equipment. From an outsider's point of view, the equipment was very far advanced. Not to Koschei. He had built and designed equipment that were far more efficient than this. Then there were the broken parts of the Tardis. The Doctor had done his best in up keeping the Tardis however he was the Doctor. However brilliant he was, he was no match for Koschei's engineering skills.

"So many things I'll need to fix…" he wandered into a workshop room and begun the unenviable task of bringing all the equipment in the Tardis up to date.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

He sloshed into the Tardis with Amy behind.

"You're dribbling sick all over the console," Koschei glowered at the duo.

"I saved the last Star whale!" The Doctor giddily replied.

"And I helped!" The ginger girl chirped.

"Yes, I just fixed your directional unit and you're dibbling sick on it! Now move away from the console, or Stars help me, I will kill you."

"He's a grumpy one isn't he?" Amy said to the Doctor, hurrying down the hallway.

The Doctor paused just outside the sick bay. It was somewhat dismantled, parts of the equipment had been taken apart and left there. "Koschei! Koschei! What did you do to my sick bay!?" He stomped back into the console room.

"Ah. I though the mending gel could do with an upgrade. It's four centuries too old. The pinocytosis wasn't working as well it should. There was degradation in the cellular build up." Koschei wiped down the sick from the directional unit, exceptionally pleased at fixing it. He buzzed his screwdriver at it, making final checks with the unit. "Perfect. All fixed. Now we'll always get to where we want unless you're driving."

The Doctor folded his arms and glared at him. "What's that supposed to mean."

"That you failed your driving test."

"Like you passed it."

"Actually I did. With flying colours and would I mention, I didn't need to steal my Tardises to get one because I was incapable of passing my driving test."

The Doctor sulked. He had totally forgotten about that. Koschei had been one of the best at driving the Tardis in Deca. He cleared his throat loudly. "What else have you decided to upgrade?"

"I have made some blueprints to overhaul the healing lamp. Your Tardis tells me the Vortex shields are in desperate need for repair and so are the subneutron circuits." He cocked his head at the time rotor. "Yes I did notice the drift controls are a bit off. Oh? It's linked to the gravitational circuits? Why?"

"Are you talking to  _my_  Tardis?" The Doctor questioned.

"Oh no. I'm talking to myself," he said sarcastically.

The Doctor was surprised. Back on Gallifrey, none of the Time Lords him included, had considered their TTC non-living, non-thinking. They were a mass of profound coding that gave a resemblance of living but it was really just the program talking. It was only centuries of travelling with the old girl that he had decided otherwise. Koschei had most definitely been one of those, yet he was talking to his Tardis. Why was old girl talking him and since when Koschei had a change of heart? He watched his old best friend duck under the console, fixing probably the drift controls, all the time muttering to  _his_  Tardis. The Tardis never spoke telepathically to anyone but their owners unless requested. Why now? Why him? The Doctor pondered over such questions as he took a slow bath. He rested his feet on the foot rest, letting the warm water wash him. At the end of the forty minute bath, the time lord was still unable to come up with any conclusive reasoning.

Now he had three mysteries on his hand. He did really love mysteries, but three? That was far too much. He popped his head into Sorley's room. Mystery number one. Oh she was a far more interesting puzzle than those two. The strange familiarity, the ability to save Donna, the ability to see the future. How? He ran into the Tardis after she had rebuilt herself and hadn't even had a moment to touch the new console before it lurched into the vortex, carrying him to Koschei and Sorley. The Doctor leaned against the doorframe, watching the rise and fall of her chest.

"Who are you?" he muttered. He made a mental note to ask her about the telly again when she woke up.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

They strode down the corridor, at the head of the group was The Doctor and Churchill. Amy shuffled beside Sorley, unsure how to take the girl. Sorley hooked an arm around Amy's, still grinning wildly. "The Doctor hasn't realized it yet." She caught Koschei's eye who was just behind them. He glanced at them, a look of realization shone on his face. He laughed loudly, a single loud chuckle before joining Sorley in her mad grinning.

"What hasn't the Doctor realized yet?" Amy asked, slightly put off by the fact that she wasn't able to follow the conversation. The two had shared a conversation that didn't require words. It made her wonder how close they were in order to be able to do. Even she and Rory had difficulties understanding each other. Rory didn't treat her badly, it was just that he practically worshipped the very floor she walked on and that made her uncomfortable.

Instead of moving to the back of the lift, Sorley held Amy in front of the Doctor with that maddening grin of her. The Doctor stared at them, realizing something crucial (to him). "This is not fair!" He sulked. "You two are Gingers!"

Amy eyed Sorley. "I'm not really following."

"The Doctor always wanted to be Ginger," explained Koschei.

"Why?"

Sorley shrugged and pointed at the Doctor with a large smile. "Ask him."

The Doctor decided that he would not be taunted into it and turned back to Churchill. Churchill puffed on his cigar, unperturbed by their conversation. "We stand at a crossroad, Doctor. Quite alone, with our backs to the wall. Invasion is expected daily. So I will grasp with both hands anything that will give us an advantage over the Nazi menace."

"Such as?"

"Follow me." The Doctor waved the smoke away, following Churchill out of the lift. They were on the roof top. There were piles and piles of sandbags everywhere.

"Very 1940s," Sorley commented. Amy stared at the view in awe.

"Doctor, this is Professor Edwin Bracewell, head of our Ironsides Project."The Doctor held the 'V for Victory' sign at the Professor.

Koschei sauntered to the edge, his hands tucked behind his back. "History! Brilliant!" There was no gleam of joy in his words. It had been hundreds of years for the Doctor, but for him, it still felt recent. He couldn't say much about it. He had been a coward, fled the war to the end of the universe. How ironic that after all the blood on his hands, he had fled at a time when blood on his hands were needed.

"That wasn't human technology." The Doctor and Koschei turned to where the laser beams had originated from.

"Show me! Show me what that was!" The Doctor demanded, climbing the stairs to stand by Professor Bracewell.

"That's impossible." Koschei muttered. "He said he destroyed them in the war. He sacrificed Gallifrey to destroy them! Sorley? Sorley!" He rounded up to her. There was an indiscernible look on his face. "Tell me Sorley. Tell me they were destroyed."

He shook her. "Tell me!"

"Koschei, you're scaring her." Amy curled her hands over his angry fists, gently trying to pry them away.

"Yes…" his hands sprang open and he backed away quickly, his chest heaving for breath. He turned to the horrifying Dalek, forcing himself to take deep and slow breaths until he was in no danger of hyperventilating. He trailed behind them. Worried, Sorley slipped her hand into his, offering comfort to the time lord. His body shook as the Doctor and him pored over the diagrams. Why didn't the Professor notice it? The equations, the statistics, none of them made sense. His mind picked apart the blueprints, the theory was acceptable but the flow of thought was eons beyond a human's imagination. It was like finding a caveman creating and manning space shuttle; ludicrous and utterly absurd.

"They're Daleks! They're called Daleks!" The Doctor insisted.

"They're Bracewell's Ironsides, Doctor! Look! Blueprints, statistics, field-tests, photographs. He invented them!"

How could a human be so ignorant? Koschei didn't even need to delve that far into the diagrams to notice the discrepancies. "Invented them? No way in bleeding stars that could have happened!"

"Yes! He approached one of our brass hats a few months ago. Fella's a genius."

"Is that what you're thinking? Genius?" He fisted the blueprints. "Look. Really look." Koschei jabbed at the 'blueprints'. "Where is the power? How is it generating power? How are the laser beams working?" He scoffed at the laser beam diagrams. "The equation doesn't tally. The numbers are all faked."

He picked up a pencil and started angrily correcting the equation. "If A as stated here is the power of 256 then kurtosis here does not support the variance. So that means-" he blacked the rest of the equation furiously. "None of this would work. X and Y axis will never coincide. Never!" He ripped the entire blueprint up. "Get that into your tiny cranium of yours. Your 'professor' couldn't have come up with this and made this work even if you gave him a hundred years."

"Do you realize what you've done?" he exclaimed. "You just destroyed highly classified military papers!" Churchill picked up the pieces. "Your companion just destroyed the blueprints!"

"The blueprints don't matter! He didn't invent them! They're alien!" The Doctor waved Koschei's transgressions away.

"They're not alien!"

"Did you just not pay attention to when I was explaining?" The human's ability to ignore anything inconvenient was beyond Koschei's imagination. He looked over his shoulder, just at the doorway, the Dalek was there, listening. There was something far bigger than just Daleks on Earth.

"I have to go back." Koschei told the Doctor and grabbed Sorley.

' _Theta, there's something far more than just a handful of daleks here. Step wisely. I'll monitor from the Tardis.'_

The Doctor nodded at his message. His eyes falling onto Koschei's hands intertwined with Sorley's. A flash of heat rushed through him. He returned to his mission at hand, finding why the Daleks were on Earth, but the thought of Sorley's hand in Koschei nagged at him from the back of his mind and he had no idea why.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Sorley wasn't sure why Koschei had dragged her back to the Tardis. She watched the blond man hurry to the scanner, not even bothering to fling his leather jacket over the jump seat. Koschei flicked the scanner on, hurriedly typing in his search functions.

"The red levers next to the Quantum form manipulators." Koschei said without lifting his eyes away from the monitor. Sorley hurried to the levers he was pointing at and pushed the up. "No. Move two steps to the left and pushed them again."

She took two steps to the left and pushed them again. How the position where she stood affected the equipment puzzled her. "You know it doesn't really matter right?"

"And you'd know this because..?"

"Just because." She folded her eyes and matched his stare. Green eyes matched the brown eyes. There was a twinkle of amusement underneath the cool brown eyes, his lips twitched in response though he said nothing, choosing to hold his peace.

A low hum rose and then a holographic map of the entire earth materialized beside her. He fiddled with the typewriter and the map zoomed out further, allowing the moon to appear as well. Just outside the orbit was a large ship. No rewards to whom they belonged to. Something was happening. The Daleks, they were starting up! Koschei hurried to the door, slamming straight into the Doctor who ran in.

"I didn't mean to!" The Doctor exclaimed, clutching his nose as he worked the console.

"Their ship was in orbit."

"Yes. They were waiting for me. They wanted my testimony."

"Testimony? We're going to them?"

"Of course."

Koschei slammed the door shut as the Doctor tried to open it. "Why aren't you using the Arton cannons? I'm sure you have them. I saw the circuit boards in the workshop. You used this Tardis during the Time War, did you not? They would have refitted your Tardis."

"I'll never use those blasted cannons again." The Doctor coldly responded. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have some Daleks to deal with." He shoved Koschei aside and slammed the door shut behind him.

"He's going to get himself killed." Koschei did a hurried circuit around the console. All the battle fixtures had been removed. The Artron Cannon, the energy beams. There was nothing offensive left on the Tardis. The fool was going to get himself killed then everyone else. He sprinted down the hallways, skidding into the workshop.

_Artron filament on the abaxial rotation. Plasma buffers hotbinded to the modulator._

The screwdriver slipped in his hand. His hands were slippery from the sweat that beaded his forehead. Koschei swore fervently, wiping his hands onto his jeans and picked up the screwdriver again, welting the fragments into the plating. The weapon wasn't going to work more than a few times, there wasn't enough time to fashion a proper buffer to intercept the correct frequencies and carom them back. The plasma buffers would just have to do.

He scrambled out into the console room, pausing just a moment at the communications panel. He frantically prepared the console, turning the scanners to the conversation that was occurring right outside. "Sorley. If and when it seems that we're not coming back. Just push the red levers. It'll bring you back to Amy and then these buttons," Koschei placed his hand on the large handbrake and pointed to several buttons, making sure Sorley knew exactly which. "send you two back home, wherever the Doctor has programmed the emergency protocol one to." He burst into the white room and shot the first one closest to him.

The Doctor cheered tremendously when Koschei stood beside him. In his arms was a really weird looking object.

"Hello Daleks." Koschei greeted. "Like my Plasmatic Artron Blaster?"

The Doctor's mouth twisted, his grin widening, matching Koschei's smirk. "Well then, as I was saying. Don't mess with me, sweetheart!"

"WE ARE THE PARADIGM OF A NEW DALEK RACE. SCIENTIST, STRATEGIST, DRONE, ETERNAL AND THE SUPREME."

"Which would be you, I'm guessing? Well, you know, nice paint job. I'd be feeling pretty swish if I looked like you. Pretty Supre-mee. Question is what do we do now? Either you turn off your clever machine or I'll blow you and your new paradigm into eternity."

"AND YOURSELF ALONG WITH YOUR FRIEND." The white Dalek said.

"Occupational hazard."

"SCAN REVEALS NOTHING! TARDIS SELF-DESTRUCT DEVICE NON-EXISTENT!" The blue dalek said.

"All right," he rescinded, taking a bite of the cookie. "It's a Jammie dodger, but I was promised tea!"

"The Tardis self-destruct device might be non-existent, but do you think you can withstand my blaster?" Koschei questioned. He didn't wait for an answer and shot the blue dalek.

"EXTERMINATE! ALL TIME LORDS MUST BE EXTERMINATED!"

Koschei slid the unlock slider, this time taking the yellow dalek down. He threw himself behind the panel, burying the glee that bubbled in his throat. "Two down and three to go!"

"Are you going to turn off your clever machine or shall I let my fellow time lord blast you all back to extinction?" The Doctor asked from behind a pillar. He had to do something. If he could disrupt the shields, he might be able to destroy the ship with his sonic screwdriver.

"DOCTOR! CALL OFF YOUR ATTACK!"

"Ah-ha! What? And let you scuttle off back to the future? No fear. This is the end for you. The final end!"

"CALL OF THE ATTACK OR WE WILL DESTROY THE EARTH."

"I'm not stupid, mate! You've just played your last card!"

"BRACEWELL IS A BOMB."

"You're bluffing. Deception's second nature to you. There isn't a sincere bone in your body. There isn't a bone in your body!"

"HIS POWER IS DERIVED FROM AN OBLIVION CONTINUUM! CALL OFF YOUR ATTACK, OR WE WILL DETONATE THE ANDROID."

"No! This is my best chance ever! The last of the Daleks! I can rid of the Universe of you, once and for all!"

"THEN DO IT. BUT WE WILL SHATTER THE PLANET BELOW! THE EARTH WILL DIE SCREAMING!"

"And if I let you go, you'll be stronger than ever. A new race of Daleks."

"THEN CHOOSE, DOCTOR! DESTROY THE DALEKS OR SAVE THE EARTH. BEGIN THE COUNTDOWN OF OBLIVION CONTINUUM! CHOOSE DOCTOR! CHOOSE! CHOOSE!"

The Doctor and Koschei exchanged looks. ' _Go Theta! I'll handle it from here!'_ The Doctor nodded and set the coordinates for the Earth.

"Guess what?" Koschei stood up and shot the orange one this time. "I'm still here. I never got to fight much in the Time War. Do you know me?" He cocked his head and leapt away in heartbeat. "I'm the Master. And I'll kill every one of you."

He bounced away from the pillar he was hiding behind, trying to fire. The blazer short circuited and he chucked it at the red dalek before it blew up, causing the red one to go up in flames. He pulled out his laser screwdriver and ducked another series of beams from the last two dalek.

"TIME LORD WITH ONLY A PROBE. HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO DESTROY ME?" If Daleks was able to change their voice pitches, Koschei would have betted on that being sarcasm.

"It's a laser screwdriver." He corrected, he hurled beside towards the dalek, screwdriver in his hand and fired the laser at the red dalek. It wasn't doing as much damage as he would have liked, but it was better than nothing. The damage from his short circuited blaster had done enough to take the shields down which then allowed his laser screwdriver to give it its death.

"Well then, just you now." He tilted his head to the white dalek, a sinister smile spreading his face. "Any last words?"

"EARTH WILL DIE SCREAMING!"

"Yes yes. Don't worry about that," he said placidly. "The Doctor will fix it." He deflected the dalek's laser beam with his screwdriver and quickly changed the settings to boost the laser. It took him five shots later and a lot of jumping around to destroy the last dalek.

Koschei stood at the progenitor. Take it down, destroy the last dalek ship.

" _What are you thinking?" The Doctor asked._

" _On the irony of me running from the war." Koschei said sadly. "We might have won if I had stayed. Us together. We'd have been unstoppable."_

" _We will never know. You didn't have a choice. By then you were too far gone. The drums' purpose had been to stay outside the timelock."_

" _I could have fought harder against the drums. I should have." Koschei gripped the Doctor's arm, tighter. "They're all dead because of me."_

_The Doctor looked grimly at him. "It really wasn't you. It was me. I killed them all."_

_Koschei laughed._

_Like the wind, the dust I will leave,_  
Never turning back, there is no grief.  
I hope to be like the wind, the dust,  
Floating into the sky in a gust.  
Leaving nothing behind,  
But the sound of the wind.

_Koschei quoted an old time lord poem. Time lords weren't interested in poetry. They were too mighty to talk about such frivolous things. He turned to the Doctor. "We don't have to be defined by the things we did or didn't do in our past."_

" _That's a good line! Where did you get that from?"_

" _The Old girl quoted it. Apparently it's from the book 'I am Number Four'."_

Koschei shook the memory away. Take down the progenitor, destroy the last dalek ship. He spun the screwdriver in his hand, not really noticing the motion; his mind working hard to figure a way to destroy the progenitor, the dalek ship and get out in time. All it drew was a blank.

"I suppose everything has its time and place." He laughed a mirthless laugh. "Time to die."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The Doctor slammed the door open, sprinting to the console room. Sorley, who had already pre-empted in advance, pulled the lever that Koschei had told her to pull the moment the door behind the Doctor shut. The time rotor went into motion and the dematerialization begun before the Doctor could reach the console.

"Koschei pre-programmed it to go to Amy."

The Doctor nodded, already inputting different things onto the typewriter. The moment the Tardis landed with a thud, he had ran out of the Tardis and into the war room and punched Professor Bracewell hard, knocking him to the ground. He shook his hand in pain.

"Sorry professor, you're a bomb." Sorley told the man, arriving just shortly behind the Doctor.

"Yes. An inconceivably massive Dalek bomb." He motioned, then waved his hand in pain.

"There's an Oblivion Continuum inside you – a captured wormhole that provides perpetual power. Detonate that, and the Earth will bleed through into another dimension." The Doctor took his sonic screwdriver out, kneeling beside him and opened up the professor's shirt. "Hold still. Koschei should be working on the Daleks up there."

The skin shifted open, revealing a strange circular pad. "Well?" Amy asked.

"I dunno, I dunno, I dunno!" He scanned the pad and shook his screwdriver for the results. "I've never seen one up close before!"

"So what, they've wired him up to detonate?"

"Not wired him up! He is a bomb. Walking, talking," he motioned and made the exploding sound. "exploding! The moment that flashes red." The Doctor pointed.

"You're scaring him." Sorley half-scolded, knowing the Doctor really didn't mean it. She knelt beside the professor, placing a hand on his shoulder. "You'll be alright."

"You don't know he'd be alright," snapped the Doctor. "We could all go BOOM!"

"You're not helping!"

"Well neither are you Sorley. Was there an episode on this? What did the episode say?"

"An episode? Are you talking about the telly? Now? Is that really the time?" Amy asked critically and folded her arms, giving the Doctor the evil eye. "Isn't there like a blue wire that you have to cute? There's always a blue wire. Or a red wire."

The Doctor groaned. "Look it's the Oblivion Continuum. It's a wormhole." He noticed the blank look on their faces. He palmed his face with a loud sigh. "Never mind. Telly. Was there or was there not an episode on this?"

He pointed at Sorley. "I don't know! I didn't watch every episode. I-" Sorley looked at professor Bracewell. It was true that she didn't remember every episode but there was a feeling, an instinct and it urged her to talk to the man. No, it didn't urge her, it demanded her to talk to the man. "Positronic brain," Sorley said though she did not know what it meant.

"Positronic brain! Brilliant!" He clasped his hands together and pointed at professor Bracewell. "Tell me about your life!"

"Doctor, I really don't think this is the time!" he protested.

"Tell me and prove you're human. Tell me everything." The Doctor insisted, this time kneeling beside him.

"My family ran the Post Office. It's a little place just near the abbey. Just by the ash trees. There used to be eight trees but… but there was a storm."

Irritated by his slow place, the Doctor pressed on. "And your parents? Come on! Tell me!"

"Good people. Kind people. They… they died. Scarlet fever."

"What was that like? How did it feel?"

"Please…"

"How did it make you feel, Edwin? Tell me! Tell me now!"

"It hurt. It hurts, Doctor, so badly. Like a wound. It was worse than a wound. Like I'd been emptied out and there was nothing."

The second section of circular pad turned red, then the third turned yellow. Whatever the Doctor was doing, it was speeding things up. "How about a girl you like?" Sorley interrupted. "Someone you love but can't be with?"

"W-what?" Professor Bracewell stammered.

"It hurts too. But a different kind of hurt. A good kind of hurt." Amy added.

"I really shouldn't talk about her."

"Oooh! There's a her." Amy smiled, seeing the last section revert to blue.

"What was her name?" The Doctor prompted.

"Dorabella."

"Dorabella? It's a lovely name, it's a beautiful name."

"What was she like, Edwin?" Sorley asked.

"Oh… Such a smile…" The professor's eyes took on a faraway look, envisioning her. "And her eyes… Her eyes were so blue… Almost violet. Like the last touch of sunset on the edge of the world… Dorabella." All the sections turned to blue, then white and became inactive.

They whooped in delight, excitedly hugging each other. "Welcome to the human race!" The Doctor beamed at them.

"Oh, no!" He got up, spinning around hurriedly. "Koschei! Got to go!" He grabbed Sorley's hand, tugging her along. "Come along Pond!"

He worked the consoles, all the time talking to them. Sorley didn't think he was talking to them and that he was really comforting himself. "Koschei's the most brilliant engineer in the universe. The best of the best. He wouldn't die so easily. We fought for so many centuries. I always pursued him. We went through so many regenerations through that. He wouldn't die so easily." They had barely entered the dalek ship, when the Tardis jerked violently, the sound of the cloister bell chiming away. "NO!"

He flung the door open. There was no more dalek ship. The ship had exploded around there, breaking apart, disintegrating into tiny bits. Burning, crackling, fracturing into smaller and smaller pieces. The sight would have been almost majestic. The death of the daleks. No more daleks.

The war finally had ended in a flurry of flames and crumbling metal pieces.

The final end.

"No no no no no!" The Doctor fell to his knees. A plethora of emotions clashed underneath the time lord's face. He gripped the doorframe so tightly that the two girls could see the white beneath his knuckles. They held each other's hands, unsure of how to comfort the time lord. "Why do they always take everything away from me?" He whispered.

He ran a hand through his hair, a sob escaping his tight throat. "I didn't ask you to die. You didn't have to die!" He punched the doorframe in anger. "You weren't supposed to die. Not today."

He banged the doorframe again, this time with less anger. Exhaustion seeping into him as the anger left. "Not now," he said hollowly. Sorley and Amy held him in their arms. He took a stuttering breath. His arms hung heavily on his sides.

He was so tired, so very old.

He was the last time lord again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry! This wasn't supposed to happen. I realized that there have been quite a few senseless character deaths in these 2 chapters, but I've decided to move several things forward and by forcing forward, I'll have to do trigger big things to create the situation I need or maybe I just like writing character deaths. We're moving into the final story plot and well, I'm moving things a little faster than I planned to as I'm condensing the story.
> 
> Please comment. Feedback is very much appreciated.


	15. Solace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lapse in update for last week. Er, apparently my right hand has a medical issue now, now I'm no longer a right-hander! I'm ambidextrous, yay. Have to learn how to sign with my left. XD Anyway slower updates since my left hand has to do much of the typing now.

They had fallen asleep on the edge of the console room. That was the first thing that crossed Sorley's mind when she woke. She wasn't warm but she wasn't cold either and her neck had a dull ache for leaning against something. There was a lukewarm weight on her shoulders - the Doctor's arms, she had been leaning against the Doctor's shoulders and when she breathed, she could smell the scent of vanilla and something oddly familiar yet could not put a finger on. She supposed it was the smell of time if time had a scent. The Doctor was still asleep and so was Amy on his left side, her head was leaning against his tweet coat just as hers had been. Sorley found herself surprised at the fact that the Doctor was sleeping with them in his arms. They had been holding him in their arms, letting him rage. Then he had gripped her lapels tightly, asking why it was never him.

He looked up at her, "Why?" His grip on her arm was bruisingly painful. "Why? Why is it never me?" The Doctor screamed over and over again. His voice was growing hoarse. A single tear slid down his face. He sank his head against Sorley's shoulder, laying it there. His body was still shaking, his eyes were half closed.

Sorley hummed a tune from the back of her mind, rubbing soothing circles on his back.

"Goodbye to the door to the things I do not need anymore-" His hand drops onto his lap, his body sagging between the arms of the two girls. His voice catches as he says to no one in particular. "Why couldn't it be me?"

When Sorley was six, she found she had a strange ability with numbers. Numbers weren't just numbers to her. They were like a map, a code that only some people could decipher. Her parents were no great achievers, her father was a pharmacist and her mother was a receptionist. There was nothing special about them. There was numbers in everything and Sorley couldn't see how people just couldn't get it. Everything was a matter of a variance or probability equation. Anything could be solved if you could find the correct equation. That was probably why she was so good at solving problems and martial arts. Sorley found that she could calculate the speed and curve, followed by the amount of damage it'd incur. From the steps she walked to the speed the car was moving, the motion of the leaf falling from the tree, everything was predictable, everything was boring.

It was her ability to calculate such things that made her popular in school. It was her ability to predict everything that also drove everyone away from her eventually. She had been alone, always alone. Her inability to understand how people couldn't keep up with her great leaps of thought. They always needed to be spoon fed. They couldn't see the patterns in the chaos. Math that rescued her was swallowing her whole. She began to reject her gift, resolutely making mistakes in her tests to maintain an average grade. It was Thomas that never gave up on her, never letting her give up on her gift. She taught Thomas how to see patterns in chaos and in return he taught her how to read people. He had a secret that he never told anyone. Science, biology, chemistry came too easily to him as well. Was it genetics that made both of them abnormally intelligent? He did a study on their family and found inconclusive results. No one in their family, immediate or extended possessed anything form of abnormal intelligence like them. They were special. In the millions of sperm cells, the ones that carried the similar chromosomes had managed to fuse to produce both of them; both that are oddly very similar physically and equally abnormally intelligent.

She had been standing on the rooftop that day. It was raining that day, large fat drops of rain travelling at ten metres per second, a typical London autumn. She stood there on the edge of the rooftop, her face was tilted to the cold falling rain, numbing the throbbing eye. Her body ached. There no doubt in her that tomorrow, much of her body would be covered in a spectacular array of bruises. Judging by the boys and girls feet angle and speed, it had enough power behind to inflict a bruise. What was the point of living if it was going to be so predictable, so painfully rejecting.

"There is no such thing as coincidences only predestined," Thomas had told her that day. "All the odds were stacked against us. Yet here we are. We were born for a special reason. A reason we cannot yet fathom."

Something that Thomas said convinced her and Sorley stopped being Sorley that day. She called herself Leya from then on, the outgoing, excitable, almost ADHD Leya that was extremely friendly.

No the assimilation wasn't perfect. Her memories, their memories were still jangling about in a certain dissonance harmony. Was she Sorley or Leya? Each side fought for dominance, each side won and lost some.

The dog came up to her and nuzzle her again. Black german shepherd. What was his name? Blackie? Pepper? It was something not very original. When she came back from the hospital and it literally pounced on her and tried to lick her face off. Thomas then proceeded to scold it and it sat down, staring at her eagerly. The dog was expecting something from her. Sorley couldn't decipher what and she failed to produce whatever it had expected causing it to heave a loud sigh and skulk to a corner. She had been rejected by the damn dog. It had made her upset but eventually she found herself turning apathetic to the rejection. It wasn't just the stupid dog, her 'mum', Thomas and even her reflection. It was ridiculous. Sometimes she would see herself in the mirror with the feeling that it wasn't her. How does one reflection reject their ownself? It was sound so crazy that she never told anyone. There was no one to tell in any case. She was all alone in a world that was not hers. Why couldn't she just not woken up?

Her green eyes raked the view from the console room. The Tardis where she had spent the last three months as Sorley and begun to call it home, the Tardis where she, as Leya, had woken up to a strange and abnormal ship in the arms of a man she recognized as a character from the TV. Comforting and distressing, familiar and strange. Always both ends of spectrum, never meeting.

She held up a hand, clenching it and releasing it. How long would it take her to stop feeling this way? The scars on her arms, she half recognized and half didn't, the white scar on her palm from the time she stopped a mugger's blade, the light claw marks from the time the Catkind monks had attacked her. It was all so… half-alien to her. Half Alien. The Sorley side of her muffled a snort at that thought. She had never considered that after travelling through time and space beside a real alien and meeting real aliens, she'd ever consider herself half-alien in a different sort of way. It just seemed so ironic.

Her eyes flickered up to the Doctor. He looked so peaceful sleeping compared to the time lord that had clutched her like a man would clutch a lifebuoy at sea. How long had they been sleeping? There was no way of telling. Outside the Tardis door, the same never-ending darkness continued on. Sorley found herself unable to look away from the Doctor, feeling a strange warmth growing in her chest as she took in his feature, comforted by the rise and fall of his chest. He was the familiar man she met on the street. Too familiar to pass off as a strange yet her memories had not connected him to anything. Not part of a TV show she watched once in a while but something personal, something that she was very… intimate with. She remembered this now. The thought of her linking him with that kind of memory was strange because she had no memories of him personally until she had met him for the first time in that street. Something had drawn her in. That something had told her that she should stay on the Tardis and continue travelling despite the fact that that was the last thing she wanted to do as the new Sorley. Sorley shook her head, she might need to come up with new names to reference her before coma, after coma and after remembering.

The three of them had been so busy running from one adventure to another that she had forgotten much of it. Sorley remembered that now. Her world. The world she had left. She had not thought much of it since she was kidnapped by a strange man and woman in a box. It hadn't been that she was forgotten them, it was just that she had no memories of them. Not many memories since she woke up from that coma, not many impressionable ones made. All she remembered was the dark starry sky that she would spend hours watching every night and waiting; waiting for something that she didn't really realize she was waiting for. Truth to be told, she still had not figured that out yet. Sorley through careful piecing had come to realize how closely Thomas resembled the Doctor. Was it possible that Thomas was an alternate form of the Doctor? It was possible right? She thought about him, then she thought about her family and the people she came to be acquainted with. It was then she realized that she felt nothing for them even with the old memories. Okay that was a fib. She had a teensy weensy guilt of abandoning Thomas however it was not as though she had a choice to begin with. Somehow something told her she not to fret for she would see her brother again.

Her slight shaking roused the Doctor who started at her blearily. "Sorley?"

"Hello," Sorley replied quietly.

"Wha-" He woke up in a hurry upon realizing he had two girls in his arms. This had never happened to the time lord. "Did we fall asleep here?" He asked. His mind replaying the last few memories. The door was still open. The debris was still floating out there. He clenched his fists tightly and got up abruptly, letting the two girls fall to the floor.

"Wha-" Amy started, rubbing her head from where it had hit the floor.

The Doctor marched to the door and slammed it shut. Without saying a word, he stalked to the console and begun working the console, the wheezing sound of the Tardis filled the thick silence. He did not look at anyone, just staring doggedly at the console, his flips and button pressing did not have the excitement nor the joy that either of the two women had seen him when piloting the Tardis. It was angry and fierce.

"Tea!" Amy shouted, unable to stand the silence. She stood up with an exaggeratedly excited "Do you want some tea?"

"Oh yes! Tea!" Sorley stood up, plastering a fake ear to ear grin. "Doctor? Would you like some tea?"

Amy jabbed her and Sorley rubbed her side but Sorley couldn't just abandon the Doctor to stay here in angry silence. It wasn't nice. He was hurting. She couldn't run away from him. The Doctor did not reply. His hands pressed flat against the console, his head was hung down. "Doctor-" Sorley moved to his side and slung an arm around his waist. The time lord was far too tall for her to sling across his shoulder. With her eyes, she motioned to Amy to go ahead with the tea. Amy hesitated then decided to leave it to the older companion.

Sorley let her arms fall to her side after a period of time "Doctor… " She fiddled with the buttons on her coat. "That day, when I woke up in the hospital. Nothing made sense to me. I could speak, I could move but I had no memories of anything. Not my dog, not my dad. I couldn't even go to work. Apparently Sorley before the accident was a mathematic genius."

The Doctor's head whipped around in shock. Lost in her thoughts, Sorley continued playing with the button. "Everything was foreign. Nothing was familiar. I was just someone in a strange strange world where everyone wanted me to fit into a role that I couldn't understand. And I asked myself why couldn't I have just died."

Her mind was still processing much of the memories. Talking about them seemed to make them churn more or settle faster, she wasn't sure. Running a hand through her hand, she took a deep breath and looked at the Doctor. His delicate eyebrows frowning at her, a look she couldn't decipher. "I- I don't think its quite the same. But you know. I'm here in a world that's not mine." She scratched her head, not really certain of her next statement. "I don't even know if an alternate me exists here. I'm mean its possible that an alternate me exists here right? I don't know if I could go home and honestly, even with my partially recovered memories, I'm not sure if I do."

The Doctor's eyebrows higher than she thought it was possible. "Why wouldn't you? … assuming I could get you back."

She shrugged. There were some darker memories of her childhood and the darker side of her that she had buried under the fake smiling mask she wore every day. "It… was difficult. It's not like I won't feel guilty. Maybe to Tommy but he'd understand. He had it easier. He could make great leaps of theory in a small starting idea but I-" She swallowed heavily, her lips twisting cynically as she spoke. "I could see and calculate probability in probably an instant. An arm swing, a leaf falling…"

"That's-" He stared pensively at her. It was far too advanced for a 21st century human. Was it possible that humans in her universe were that advance?

"No one could keep up with me. Even though I was the same as them, I couldn't really understand them. What I want to say is that… that…" Her hands returned to playing with the buttons on her coat. "You don't have to feel like you're the last one left…"

The Doctor pulled her hands off her buttons, reluctantly, Sorley looked up into his green-brown eyes. "Thank you," he said with a ghost of a smile on his lips.

She felt her cheeks turn red. Tactfully or maybe un-tactfully, she spun onto the stairs with a large fake smile, "Tea then! Amy must be waiting for us."

He nodded and followed her skipping form up the stairs.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Just the abaxial modulators now. Koschei rubbed the back of his neck tiredly. The Doctor wouldn't hold it against him for making him the last time lord again, would he? But there was no other way. He checked it, tripled checked it. He couldn't set it on a delay, he couldn't wait for the Doctor. The emergency temporal shift was beginning.

'Sorry Doctor.' He tried his best to send it to the Doctor. The distance was too far. Without the time lord consciousness to supplement and boost, it was impossible even for him to send a telepathic message that far.

He aimed his screwdriver at the machine and sonicked it. Above he could hear the loud explosions and the growing heat. Koschei closed his eyes, his body tensing for the end. The end that never came.

"Are you some kind of idiot?" a female voice growled, arms grabbing him.

The explosions disappeared, along with the growing heat. Just the strange birdsong. Bird song? Koschei opened his eyes in shock. In front of him stood Sorley. Sorley? What was Sorley doing here?

"What are you doing here?" His mind took in his surroundings. Green sky, yellow leaved willow trees, silver grass. This was…Lupal't. "What are we doing here?"

"I teleported us here. That's what." She slapped him hard. "That's for the stupid suicide you were planning on doing." She slapped the other side of his face. "That's for putting the Doctor through hell."

"You!" Koschei wanted to throttle the woman. How dare she tell her what he can or cannot do. He was a time lord and she was a mere… He eyed her clothes. She wore a straight black ankle long duster coat, no buttons, an oversized blue sweater matched with the black mini skirt and above knee black stocks and light brown ankle boots with laces. That was not what she was wearing the last time he saw her. Not to mention though she looked physically the same, her eyes were old, as old as the old time lords he had seen before on Gallifrey. "You're an older Sorley."

"Thanks Captain Obvious." She rolled her eyes.

"You crossed your own timelines! You're never supposed to cross your own timelines!"

"I can cross the hell I want to." She shot back angrily. She had come just in time to save him yet not a word of gratitude was heard from him. "You're welcome!"

"Yea? But time lord rules state that you-"

"To hell with your time lord rules! I'm 102, 460 years old. What's a mere 3,200 year old time lord gonna tell me?" She spun on her heel and stormed away.

"102, 460 years old? What?" Several questions floated in his mind upon hearing that. How did she survive so long? Even time lords couldn't live that long. They were assumed to be immortals but really they weren't. At best they lived up to a thousand years with twelve regeneration cycles, they could live up to 12,000 years. 12,000 years was a small fraction to her age. Why was she alone? Where was her Doctor? Koschei hurried after her, calling her to stop but she did not.

After forty minutes of fast trotting in the jungle, she came to a stop. A body was lying face down. "Who's that?" He asked.

"River Song, student of Luna University."


	16. It's not wibbly wobbly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> River realizes who exactly Sorley is, meanwhile the Doctor is forced to 'enjoy' adventuring again. Koschei on the other hand embarks on his own separate journey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Struggling to update in a timely fashion without overstressing my right hand. This chapter is a bit milder with two different ‘adventures’ ongoing. I’m sorry that the Doctor isn’t a bouncy and lively Doctor, I don’t believe he should be after ‘losing’ Koschei. The great revelation is here. I did plan to have a more subtler revelation but River being River, she wrote her own dialogue so yes. Here it is, in your face. Let me know if you had guessed it correctly!
> 
> Also wanted to point out that Amy in my story will be different. She's usually portrayed as a flirt etc but I'm trying out a different spin. Let me know if you liked it.

"So where are we again, Doctor?" Amy stared around in amazement. They were on a cliff in a jungle. Very possibly Amazon were it not for the strange red moon in the sky. Dark green leafy forests filled past the horizon. Amy had never seen such a large jungle before, that then again, she had never left Leads worth.   


The Doctor licked at bit of the dirt and the girls stared at him at disgust. "Sorento Magnus, the 5th moon I believe. Very fascinating place too. Came here once three hundred years ago."

"Three hundred?! How old are you now?" Amy gaped at him.

"Rude aren't we?"

Amy shrugged at his comment. "Men don't get it like women do. Rory's best friend once said to me men age like fine wine and women age like milk."  

"Well cheese tastes fantastic so there's nothing wrong with aged milk." Sorley smiled.

“Oh god. That’s a fantastic comeback! I should totally use it when the bloody Raz says that to me again. Mind if I use it?”

“Go right ahead but he sounds awfully mean for a best friend. Who’s Rory anyway?”

“Her boyfriend.” The Doctor motioned to the cliff and then to the jungle behind them. “Cliff or jungle.”

“Cliff.” “Jungle.” The two girls replied contradicting each other.

“Jungle.” “Cliff.” They replied at opposites of each other again.

“Bugger. We don’t care. You decide.” Amy said this time.

“Cliff,” said a low baritone behind them. The trio turned around slowly to see three men pointing a cylindric wooden thing at them. Probably a gun, the Doctor assumed quickly and placed himself between them and the girls.  

“We’re unharmed and mean no harm,”The Doctor slowly said, spreading his hands out in a slow, gentle gesture.

“Says the people who just appeared from thin air directly above the Queen’s den,” growled the man who seemed to be the leader.

They were dressed in leather of various colours, the leader was dressed in dark brown leather with a shimmer of gold while minion A and B were dressed in blue and white leather respectively. The Doctor smiled weakly. “The Queen’s what?”

“The Queen’s Den! It’s sacrilegious to perch above the Queen’s den just before hatching!”

“Hatching?” Amy reiterated. She cocked her head at the Doctor who only looked confused.

“Tie them, Far’qui’er,” the leader motioned with his head and the man wearing white, stepped forward.

In the shadows of the leafy jungles, the trio had not been able to get a good look at the two lackeys. Far’qui’er was by far the most handsome man Sorley had ever laid eyes on. His hair was dark gold and thick, neatly plaited, hanging just above his waist.  He smirked and spoke quietly in the deep baritone as he looped the leather strings round their non-resisting wrists, “don’t worry, Ker’li’er is just being antsy.”

Amy leaned, whispering to Sorley as they followed the men. “That man was hot and seemed nice!”

“I thought you were attached,” Sorley replied amused. He was indeed very handsome, his bluish-gold eyes had rectangular pupils much like sheep.

“Just because I’m engaged doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the view,” She countered. Her cheeks flushed and she tilted away, pretending to concentrate on walking down the stone steps. “Besides, Rory likes to check out other women too. Why can’t I do that too?”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t.” It was apparent to Sorley that she had unwittingly touched a sore subject.

Amy huffed. “You implied! That’s as good as saying it!”

Sorley’s reply was cut off by the Doctor’s strangely curt voice, “Oh blimey. Dragons. I didn’t see them last time.”

The two women who had stopped mid-way down the steps to argue turned towards the Doctor. A large red dragon with wings that was easily the length of a bus on each side was clawing up the cliff towards them. It wasn’t just the size of the wings or the size of the body, it was the length of teeth that made them go still. Large multitudes of teeth, each easily half the size of them and that thing was clawing towards them.  

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

“It’s you again,” the blond hair lady snarled. She patted herself down and stared at Sorley, pulling herself upright. Her eyes gave Koschei a dismissive look. “Don’t you have anything better to do than to follow me around?”

“Don’t you have anything better to do than to follow the Doctor around?”

“I am not following the Doctor around,” she hissed tersely. “It’s… an assignment on the Flora patterns during the Nebulous storm.”

“Which the Doctor happens to just be here. Nearby. Not too far away.” Sorley folded her arms and stared at the girl.

The girl, River, merely rolled her eyes. “Coincidence. You know how time travel can be. If I’m following the Doctor around then you are no better. You too have no right being here.”

Sorley scoffed. “Actually I do. I’m technically his wife and you’re not supposed to be with them. You read the history reports. It was only the Doctor and his companion. Singular.”

Koschei pursed his lips at this revelation. No, he was not surprised at this. He had already assumed it so since he found out in the pocket universe but she said technically. Did that mean the Doctor rejected her? Based on how much he knew the Doctor, he hadn’t considered that the Doctor would have rejected her.

“Technicalities.” River waved her hand away. “I can’t give it up. He’s too intriguing besides he doesn’t hate having me around.”

“Really? Is that what you see?”

“Bugger off. What are you? My mum?”

“Actually I am.”

River was rummaging through her bag for something when Sorley said that. Hands stopping, eyes narrowing on Sorley, her voice dripped with scorn as she replied, “Sorry, I do believe Amy Pond-Williams is my mum not you.”

“Sure. Biologically.” Sorley smiled. “Do I have to send you back to force you to pick a new topic?” Looking up, she muttered, “Too late.”

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The Doctor watched the red dragon claw up the cliff. He should had been terrified for his life or his two companions. However the only question that seemed to bring relief was the question whether it was finally his turn to. That morbid thought shamed him and he pushed it further down. Pulling himself together,  he took a deep breath and turned to their captors. It was obvious that while they had been angered by their intrusion and was apparently sacrilegious they were quite civil. Perhaps they were going to put them on trial whether he would be able to talk themselves out of the situation.

He glanced back at the looming dragon and shook his head somewhat disappointed. The dragon wasn’t even aggressive. “Come along now,” he said to his two companions with far lesser than his usual energy.

The travelling and wandering was beginning to take its toll on him. It never mattered how many times he saved the universe or how many universes he saved, no one cared. In the end it was always him losing everything he cared for. The Doctor watched Sorley trail behind. She caught him watching her and she grinned cheekily at him. A small smile unconsciously spread across his face. Sorley the mysterious girl, the strangely familiar girl, his one companion that would still be travelling with him far in the future seeing he still had not met his old self in the markets of Shan Shen. If he could hold onto her, maybe it would be too terrible.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

They had been stuck in the cell for two hours because the Doctor’s screwdriver doesn’t work on wood.

“I don’t get it,” Amy growled. “What kind of screwdriver doesn’t. Work. On. Wood!?” She rattled the bars. “WOOD for crying out loud! HELLO! CAN WE GET BETTER BARS? LIKE METAL BARS!?”

Sorley rubbed the temples of her head, trying to alleviate the throbbing of her head. The Doctor had resigned himself to the sad irony of being stuck in a cell because the bars were wood and had been staring at Sorley when he noticed how she flinched every time Amy yelled. “Amy. Please. Could you keep it down?”

Amy spun around, her mouth half opened to retort when she caught Sorley’s grimace. “What’s wrong?”

“I think her headaches are back,” he said quietly. “Come here.”

The Doctor laid Sorley’s head on his lap and placed his fingers at her temples. He looked at her questioningly and her nod was almost indiscernible.

He could feel the press of their minds together and a soft jelly-like substance separating her mind from his. It was different this time. Three times he had accessed her mind, twice when she was in a coma and that had been akin to entering a dark and empty room. This was the fourth time yet compared to the first time it was vastly different.

There was a taste in the ‘air’. It tasted like Gallifrey and stepping into her mind felt like coming home. Slightly unnerved by the strange feeling, he puzzled over any possible reasonings but found nothing that could explain.

Her mind was also no longer arranged the same way as it had on their first try. Instead of doors, there were shelves and shelves of books, an immeasurable amount of books all neatly lined out. Each book was a memory, some books were unremovable and all in variety of books. The Doctor speculated that they were colour coded after opening several with similar feelings from the same coloured books.

How can there be so many memories? Is it possible to acquire so many in just 26 years? The Doctor puzzled over it before sensing a presence. Had she managed to materialize her presence?

‘Sorley?’ He called out mentally.

‘Who are you?’ Came the sudden response. It wasn’t Sorley.

‘Who are you? Show yourself!’ Did she pick up a mind parasite?

A child with shoulder length ginger hair and chubby cheeks materialized in front of him. She cocked her head at him, her green eyes watching him intently.

‘Amy?!’ The Doctor stared at the child startled. Apart from the differences in the dressing, the child was an uncanny image of young Amelia Pond, but what was she doing here?

‘You are the Doctor. You cannot be here yet.’

‘What are you doing to her?’ Narrowing his eyes, he glared at the child. His eyes darkened like the skies before a storm, hands fisted tightly over the mental projection of his sonic screwdriver.

The child stared back at the Doctor, completely unaffected by his oncoming storm demeanor. ‘I am not doing anything to her. She is merely redistributing her memories.’ She pointed at the shelves of books moving about, sinking, disappearing, reappearing, reshelving. ‘You must leave now or risk destroying the delicate balance that your lindo packets will upset.’

Without a further word said, it was like a door slammed shut in the face and the Doctor found himself blinking blearily at worried Amy.

“Is she okay?” Amy whispered.

Sorley was nodding off on his lap. The pain must have exhausted her. and the Doctor found that he oddly enjoyed the feeling of her warm head on his lap. He nodded and brushed a hair off her head.

“How well do you know Sorley?” he asked. The time lord tried to piece the connection between both. Amy was at least a head taller than Sorley but their features were rather similar. Ginger hair, green eyes, eyes that seemed to see through others, they even had the same face shape though the nose and chin were different. Cousins? Siblings? Sorley would have no one here to call family. Was Amy Sorley’s alternate self here?

“Well. Not much. She’s really sweet and friendly but I’ve only known her for.. four days? That’s how long we’ve been travelling right?”

The correct amount of time would have been a week. The Doctor however was too busy thinking to correct her.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

“What were you doing above the Queen’s Den?” Ker’li’er asked for what seemed to be the hundredth time.

The Doctor sighed, pressing his nose bridge. Was this the reason why he only came to this planet once? The natives were so slow. “I told you,” he said slowly, carefully enunciating each word as though speaking to a child. “We crash landed on this planet by my ship and we accidentally landed on top of your Queen’s den. We mean no harm whatsoever. If you would be so kind to release us, we will merrily go on our own ways and leave you alone.”

This trip was far too recent since Koschei’s....departure. All the Doctor wanted to do was to lie in bed under his blankets and wish everything would just go away. Sorley on the other hand was extremely persistent in not letting him do so. She and Amy nagged at him about everything. It even seemed that the Tardis was helping them, tossing him out of the bed. The pool had been shifted under his bed making it so that he landed every time she tossed him out of bed and into the pool. The water was predictably cold even to his time lord biology.

“You keep saying your ship. I don’t see a ship.”

“Perhaps he meant the blue box,”  Far’qui’er responded.

The older man scoffed at Far’qui’er. “The blue box cannot hold three people. I don’t see how the engines would fit.”

The Doctor wanted to pull his hair and/or strangle Ker’li’er for being the most bloody annoying person he had ever met.

“Doctor!” Sorley burst into the room with a large grin on her face. Somehow she and Amy had managed to hoodwink their captors into letting them free while he had been stuck in the stuffy interrogation room. He kept analyzing how they did it but he couldn’t come up with a plausible reason. The only reason he could come up with was that they looked more trustable and responsible than him, a reason that he adamantly refused to acknowledge. He was the most responsible person in the universe!

A long deep bellow echoed through the hallways.

“THE HATCHING!” Far’qui’er was out of the room faster than the Doctor could say geronimo. She laughed, a loose strand of hair dangled from her loosely tied ponytail and tugged the Doctor down the hallway, leaving the mortified Ker’li’er behind.

Sorley and the Doctor arrived at the den just as a whole flock of dragons took off into the sky, trumpeting loudly. Shades of red, green, white and gold filled the skies. Their large scaly wings beating in the dawning of the light, almost seeming luminous as their scaly bodies caught the light. They weren’t just flying. Their great wings were churning up buffets of leaves into the air, creating a strange leaf storm. The leaves were glowing and pulsing in time with the low humming and trumpeting of the dragons and when the first egg began to hatch, a sweet tenor whine from the single blue dragon joined the song.

The time lord released the breath that he did not know he was holding when the last egg finished hatching. He had triggered his respiratory bypass without realizing it.

“That was amazing!” Sorley cheered, tugging on their clasped hands. He frowned at the hands, not remembering when or how long their hands had been clasped. “It was amazing right? Doctor?” He turned his attention from the hands to Sorley, seeing her furrow her eyebrows at him.

“Yes.” He tucked the annoying loose strand behind her ear and clasped his hands together. “It was.”

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

A clear sky was filled with blue and red streaks. The nebulous storm had begun, sealing the Doctor and his companions off from the rest of the world and now River would be unable to make her way to the Doctor. “You knew this would happen,” River said accusingly at her.

Stuck on the planet with nowhere to go and no way off the planet, they were stuck for the remainder of the next few hours in a cave. Koschei at one point of time wished desperately that he was back on the Dalek’s ship and dying. That was preferable that sitting in the cave with the two women and the blond haired woman sniping angrily at the ginger. He didn’t have enough information about the blond haired woman named River to form a logical profile of her, he did however have that many hours of angry one-sided conversations.

River had immediately dismissed him as pointless and uninteresting, her mental thoughts echoed such. Koschei found her mental thoughts disconcerting. He could hear her thoughts bouncing about her mind. Anger, frustration, irritation was directed to Sorley and most of all was the persistent question of how she, Sorley, seemed to know everything all the time.

“Pardon me, but how is she your daughter if she’s Amy’s biological child?”

Sorley only smiled at his question. “Don’t bother,” River said dismissively. “She won’t answer it. She’s much to-” Realization dawned on her. “NO WAY! I’m your child, that’s what they all said. How is that possible? How are you here and there at the same time? Oh this explains so much. You’re the only reason why I’m a half time lord.”

She leapt forward, pushing Sorley to the ground, throttling her. Her face contorted in a mask of rage. “I spent all my life in that- that- that place! YOU COULD HAVE SAVED ME! YOU COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING! WHY!?”

Koschei moved to pull the blond woman off. “I suffered all those years for nothing! You could have ended it so much earlier yet you didn’t!” She swore vehemently and pushed Koschei aside. Sorley stood completely unperturbed by River’s outburst. There was not even the slightest bruising on her neck.

“I can’t change time.”

“What do you mean you can’t change time? You’re the bloody Tardis! You can change whatever bloody thing you want to.”

“Time is a fixed thing you see. Time lords like to see time as a fluctuating thing, a ball of wibbly wobbly ball of.. thing but its not. Time doesn’t meander, it doesn’t flow. It follows the fixed path that’s set far beyond anyone’s imagination. Each choice we make follows the fixed path. It’s not changing. It never changes. One of the roads it follows will unwind time and that is also fixed.”

“Then you could have changed it so we could have followed a different path.”

“Because we changed far too much. The game pieces of this game is something three dimensional beings cannot understand. The stakes of the game is more than your suffering. I cannot risk branching a new path just because it suits me.”

“But the path exists! You just said that each choice we make is a fixed path so it has to exist.”

“The path to the designated ending for this game cannot be changed. You are not that important. The path cannot be diverted just for you.”

Koschei felt the slight barb on her comment. A few hours ago, he had been told that he was important to preserve the timelines then he had gone right ahead on a pretty much suicidal attack. The slaps she had given him were well-deserved. After digesting all those that the women had discussed, Koschei was definitely certain that by her coming to rescue him, she would have to had given up on something. Feeling guilty, he wondered if abandoning River to whatever cruel fate she had implied was due to him directly or indirectly.

“I hate you. I’ll never forgive you and I’ll never give up on the Doctor. Never!” River pushed several buttons on her vortex manipulator and disappeared.

“Come along. You can’t be here either. The future you is here,” Sorley said placidly and grabbed his arm.

“What’s the future me like?”

“Dark and a father.”

“Father? Really? To whom?” Koschei felt surprised at her remark. Did they ever managed to recover Gallifrey without collapsing the whole of time and space? That seemed the only way he was ever going to be a father. That or he or the Doctor turning female but if he turned female he’d a mother not a father. Koschei imagined the Doctor as a female and shuddered.

Sorley gave him a look. “You bore Jack’s child.” And she laughed loudly at his startled reaction. “Kidding. Can’t say.”

The view changed before them. Gone were the green skies and yellow willow trees, in its place was the very familiar vortex. “Yes we are safe,” Sorley answered before he could voice. “If it feels better, I can make a box for you.” A room with windows appeared around them. Outside, Koschei could still see the vortex.

“So you can create anything just like a Tardis?” He was intensely curious about how a human she appeared and occasionally how cold she was. How much of her was a Tardis and how much was she still human. He fiddled with his laser screwdriver and scanned her. Unsurprisingly, his scans only revealed that she was a 21st century human.

“Yes. There are some restrictions but I can do more than what my Type 40 counterpart can do.”

“So are you two separate or one singularly conscious?”

“You’ll find out.” The room disappeared and Koschei found himself standing in a something kind of underground room with a very angry Jack glaring at him.

“Sorley?” He spun around and the older Sorley was gone.

  



	17. Connected through time: The Collapse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know that we’ve a lot of future/past Doctors/companions and it can be relatively confusing. I mean, this is a time traveller’s story right? There has to have that. So to be clear, there is always one current time traveller that I’m writing about. Generally that refers to current Doctor or Current Koschei. So if you get lost, just check if the Doctor or Koschei is the current one.
> 
> On side note, I planned this dragon adventure a long time ago but somehow when I’m writing it, it just didn’t turn out the way I thought it would. More like a flop. I’ll probably rewrite it eventually. Writing Amy without Rory just seems plain weird. It was planned for Donna so the adventure doesn’t work too well on Amy. Oh yes, there’s a chp 1 rewrite somewhat a big change. Highly recommend to re-read chp 1.
> 
> I realized that when I was writing this, I imagined Far’qui’er looking like Alex Pettyfer except with blue gold eyes.

“Amy right?” Far'qui'er said, sitting beside her. She nodded and turned her attention back to the cliffs. Amy had been sitting on the cliff watching  young fledging dragons tumble in the plains below them under the watchful eyes of the adult dragons. Even now, Amy could scarcely believe that she was seeing real life dragons. She had waited fourteen years for this and now sitting here, all she could think of what it was like to one day have children with Rory and whether they’d tumble about the sand pit the way the young dragons did. Ironic. Amy knew what they whispered behind her back. Boyfriend stealer, whore, slut. None of them even Rory knew the true story. Amy was pretty and spirited, never really caring what other people said about her. The boys in Leadworth were attracted to her without her doing anything. Admittedly she wasn’t the quickest on uptakes often requiring boys to actually spell it out that they liked her before she realised that they did. That also meant she unknowingly spurred the boys on. With her looks and popularity among the boys, the girls apart from Mels begun a scandalous rumour.

 

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me right? Wrong. It got so bad that her teacher eventually pulled her aside and asked her if there was a figment of truth in it. Except the teacher had already made his own judgement and too had believed the girls, so no matter what Amy said, it did nothing to change his views.

 

“You’re in very deep thought.” Far'qui'er commented. “I can almost hear your thoughts clamouring right outside my shield.”

 

“What?” She stared at him surprised. Thinking Amy hadn’t heard him, he repeated his statement. ”What do you mean by hear my thoughts?”

 

“Your shields are either underpowered or that you’re in very deep thought.”

 

“I… don’t have shields. At least I don’t think I have shields.”

 

He raised an eyebrow at her statement. “Are you not telepathic?”

 

“No. The last time I checked, humans weren’t telepathic.”

 

He looked thoughtful before speaking again. “Are your two friends not humans?”

 

“The Doctor’s an alien but Sorley’s human.” Shrugged Amy. The Doctor had mentioned something about her headaches returning and even though she did not really know the girl, Amy was suddenly reminded of little Julie who had passed away from a brain tumor. Amy hoped that Sorley would get better. She wasn’t terminally ill, was she? “What’s going to happen to us?” she asked. Despite being allowed to run free, they had not been allowed to return to the Tardis. What would happen if Sorley need medical attention?

 

“Well. Ker'li'er can’t force you to stay now that the hatching has passed. But-” Far'qui'er paused, his bluish-gold eyes turned to the dragons. “I don’t think he’d be easily persuaded to allow you to leave.” He clasped his hands on his knee. “See there’s a prophecy long before the earth was born. A prophecy passed from generation to generation about a man in the blue box and his companions . Would you like to see it?”

 

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 

“When you said see it, I assumed it was a writing or something!” Amy clung to his waist tightly. She was torn between keeping her eyes open to see the most amazing view she had yet to see and keeping her eyes shut from the probably most terrifying view she had seen in the last week. Never again would she make fun of Wendy for her acrophobia even if Wendy was terrified of just seven floors up. Up in the sky hundreds and thousands of kilometres above ground, Amy could feel the white dragon’s muscle beneath her legs, tensing and relaxing with each stroke of his wings.

 

“It is a writing!” He chuckled. He reached behind and placed a green plant visor on her nose. “Better?”

 

The stupid cold wind was no longer biting into her eyes but now that meant if she kept her eyes shut it was definitely telling him that she was terrified of the view below. Amy grouched before opening one eye. “I suppose.”

 

“Afraid of heights?”

 

“No!” She retorted. Even if she were afraid, she wasn’t going to let anyone know about it.

 

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of it. Before we are allowed on our bonded, we are required to prove that we are able to withstand the height.” Amy didn’t know how the man was able to withstand the cold wind stinging his eyes, but she guessed it was the training that he had mentioned. The Kragion continued on, explaining the intricacies of his society, “The dragons choose their riders. Bea’l here chose me when I was nine.” He pronounced the name with a sound like a grr. How he made it sound so seductive, weird and innocent at the same time was completely lost on Amy when he dove into a steep dive.

 

Amy clung even tighter that she thought she was capable of, screaming all the way down. Far'qui'er only guffawed at her extreme reaction to something that was probably mundane to him. The white dragon, Bea’l pulled out sharply out of their descend and landed gracefully on a stack of rocks. She noted the almost seemingly smug look on Bea’l when Far’qui’er had to help Amy off his back. The dragon and his rider shared a look. They were making fun of her! Amy pulled her hand out of Far’qui’er’s and took a few steps away from them.

 

“It’s pretty normal to scream like that,” she said hotly, folding her arms. Her legs were still jelly and she prayed that they’d not collapse under her and embarrass her further.

 

The dragon and Far’qui’er shared another look.

 

She huffed. “I’d like to see you take a trip on the Tardis and not scream!” Amy knew that there was nothing remotely scary travelling on the Tardis compared to this, but neither the dragon nor Far’qui’er knew that and she was going to milk it for all it was worth.

 

“Fair enough,” the Kragion smiled.

 

“So where is this… prophecy thingy.” Amy surveyed their surroundings, noticing for the first time that the rock was some kind of black rock and seemed to stretch out. She had been far too occupied with screaming to notice that they were on a large flat rock that seemed almost the size of Leadworth. The small flat rocks that Far’qui’er had helped her down from seemed to be some sort of landing bay, if anything like that existed in this world.

 

Far’qui’er pointed at a bunch of rocks that looked like every other rock in the rockscape. “I don’t see it.” Amy leaned against Far’qui’er, trying to follow where his eyes was staring at. Still just rocks. He grinned and placed a hand on the bunch of rocks. The ground rumbled beneath them and a crevice formed where the rocks were. Amy gaped at it, her mouth opening and closing at it. “That was- cool! So what’s beneath there?”

 

Far’qui’er held her back before she could jump down the steps. “Non-kragions will die if they step there.”

 

“Okay… then why you did bring me here to see the prophecy if I couldn’t see it?”

 

He nodded and motioned at the steps. “Wait here. Don’t step in. I can link with you.”

 

“Link?” Her question was cut off as he brushed his long fingers over her eyes and a strange sensation overcame her. It was as though she suddenly had astigmatism, she saw herself through his eyes and saw him through her eyes. The sky wasn’t the same shade of blue, the red moon was brighter and dazzling in a myriad of reds that she never knew could have existed. Amy could see the strange waves in the air, the lazy beating of the dragon behind her. The world seemed to slow down through his eyes. He saw and processed the world faster than she did, the small logical part of her mind told her. Amy wasn’t sure where or how her mind had actually deduced it and privately or however private she could, she hoped it was really her internal voice and not Far’qui’er tapping into her thoughts. There was no response to that thought.

 

The Kragion made his way down the dark tunnel. Her human mind processed it as dark however it seemed that the link had piggybacked Far’qui’er’s senses. She could feel the dirt beneath his feet crunching, the eyes dilating to take in more light. Through his ears, she could even hear herself breathing. There was a low pitched humming that picked up as he made his way down the tunnel. The dark tunnel broke off into sections and he continued without hesitation, following the humming. After several moments of walking, he came to a stop in front of a large rock that by all logical senses should not have been able to fit under the small crevice.

 

Saviors of the worlds, Destroyers of the Silence, they will come three times.

 

On final and last time, the man in his blue box, the sister, the wife, the husband and wife and the lonesome would arrive. The moon will disappear, the stars will darken, the skies will rise. The fall will come and only they can stop it.

 

The words seemed to translate beneath her vision. There was no doubt the man in his blue box would have referred to anyone but the Doctor but who was the rest? Amy felt the hair on the back of neck stand and she couldn’t help by shiver at the ominous tone the prophecy seemed to indicate.

 

“How many people have read it?” she asked when he returned above ground. The moments since she laid eyes on the prophecy seemed longer than he had taken to get to the stone. Amy would have scoffed at her irrational fear under normal circumstances, but with the creepy prophecy, she just wanted to sit down and have a cup of tea. Probably several cups of tea in fact.

 

“Only those who become bonded are allowed to come here but not everyone does. To read it is to carry the responsibility and not every bonded wants that.”

 

“And you did?”

 

“I am Far’qui’er, son of Y’tes’er, I am third in line for the D’eer or first in line for the outlying areas.” He pointed at some lands. “This is my responsibility to bear.”

 

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 

“Jack!” Koschei smiled. He stumbled back as Jack punched him in the eye. “Nice to see you as well.” Koschei clutched his eye.

 

“Back to kill me again? Not enough on the Valiant?”

 

Valiant? Koschei ducked the oncoming punch. “Jack. What happened on the Valiant, I’m truly sorry for it.” He evaded another punch. There was an audience watching the fight, Jack’s subordinates judging by their reactions.

 

“Jack isn’t that Harold Saxon? The prime minister that was supposed to be assassinated?” One of the men asked in a distinct welsh accent.

 

The dark pit grew in Koschei’s stomach. Judging by Jack’s reaction the time lord had immediately realized that it was still very early for Jack, he had not realized how early until the welsh man spoken up. They knew him as Harold Saxon. How long ago was the Valiant for them?

 

Jack did not respond to his team’s persistent questions. The dark look in his eyes was an expression that Koschei was all too familiar with. It was the look that haunted him everytime he walked past a mirror, granted that he had not always been this face or this pair of eyes. He didn’t want to admit it that there were times when he was just awake that felt a hollowness in him, Koschei repressed much of it but 2,000 years of suffering was far too long for him to not miss the spike of fury and madness and the sound of the ever beating drums.

 

It was this fury and madness that the time lord saw in Jack’s eyes. The never-ending torture replayed in Jack’s memories. The present Jack would not care that he was a decent man, he would not even care if he was a very good man now. He was just angry, furious beyond logic. In that split second, Koschei knew that there was only one way of fixing it. He took a deep breath, stilling himself long enough for Jack’s punch, bracing for the impact. His body flew and landed awkwardly against a far wall. Jack straddled him, pushing away his team members who tried to pull him off and plummeted him.

 

“Every moment, every hurt. I’ll remember it.” He growled.

 

The pain helped. The Doctor had forgiven him, the Jack he met had forgiven him but he knew they shouldn’t, he felt he shouldn’t have gotten off so easily. They should have regenerated him, the Doctor should have done that. He wanted to be punished, he wanted to punished for all the terrible things he did in those 2,000 years. The Master was a terrible man and he had failed in stopping himself. Koschei surrendered himself to the beatings, he felt his ribs crack, the swelling of his lips and he reminded himself of every time he had been evil. The time he tried to kill Ace, destroy worlds countless of times, attempted and almost succeeded several times in killing the Doctor permanently. He, the Master, was a man beyond redemption.

 

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 

“Doctor!” Sorley clutched her ear, the dragons were keening, wailing telepathically. Why she had picked it up, she did not know however the dragons were collapsing to the ground. And as sudden as it begun, the D’eer or caverns as she would have called it was silent. The Kragions and dragons alike had collapse. The fierce throbbing had restarted in her mind.

 

“Doctor!” she bent over the Doctor’s crumpled form on the ground. He was still breathing, faintly, his pulse was rapid. Sorley had no idea what counted as a normal pulse for a time lord. Was this a normal heart rate? She dug into his inner pockets before finding the rubber duck that was christened Trento by Donna and the sonic screwdriver. Was Amy affected?

 

“Yes, she should be,” she mumbled to herself., adjusting the sonic to the correct settings. “whatever that occurred had only affected telepathic lifeforms.” The results of the Doctor’s scan had proved to be normal. She didn’t know except the results had this odd green light that indicated that all was normal for his species and a red light for his brainwaves activity. Green was normal and red was bad right?

 

“Is there anyone awake?” Sorley called out. The hallways remained silent. She fought an urge to run hysterically down the hallways, hysteria never helped anyone. There was no way of contacting Amy, pointless to worry about her.

 

Taking a deep breath, Sorley slowly reflected on what had been going on before the Collapse had happened. Yes, it had been a normal conversation of whatever that constituted as normal with the Doctor and the D’eer leader Ker’li’er. Atoms, telepathy, telepathic waves then the man, Kir’er or was his name Qui’tor’er, burst into the room saying something about something broke. She hadn’t been much attention.

 

Something about the thing in back had broken. Sorley rested the Doctor in a more comfortable position, she squeezed his hands. “I’ll be right back, Doctor,” she said evenly as though he was awake enough to hear her. “I’m just going to check on… the thing.” Sorley moved from him, casting him a final look and quashed every jumpy feeling. First she would check the thing, figure what happened, wake the Doctor or better yet, wake everyone and then worry about Amy. Hopefully she wasn’t in mid-air when the Collapse happened.

 

-x-x-x-x-x-

 

“Jack!” Jack’s heart lurched when he heard her call him from behind.

 

“Sorley.” He replied, lowering his hand, glancing guiltily at the time lord. The time lord resembled like a bloodied flesh. Despite the clear disapproval from Sorley and his team mates, Jack found that he was not sorry at all. The time lord had deserved it for all he had done and more.

 

“Where are you from?” he asked her, getting off the time lord. Jack held in the urge to spit at Koschei, schooling his face to a neutral look.

 

Jack recognized the outfit that Sorley was dressed in. A very long shawl with a skirt that fell all the way to her ankles, he remembered that. “1869.”

 

He stepped up to her and pulled her into his arms. His lips pressing into her soft ones, the sensation and taste so familiar that Jack could not help but press harder against her, he felt her smile against his lips.

 

“Hello Jack,” she murmured, pulling away, breathing hard.

 

Jack burrowed his face to her neck, his arms going round her waist. He missed this smell so much. 1869’s Sorley was his Sorley - his. He held her tightly, ignoring the catcalls and wolf whistling,

 

“Hello,” Sorley said to the rest, waving awkwardly from Jack’s tight grip on her. “How long has Koschei been here?”

 

“Just an hour before you came,” Owen answered.

 

Jack felt her pull away and he whined, he would let her have her conversation as she always did when she met up with the team. Yes he would let her. Jack picked her up and placed her on his lap where he sat at Tosh’s table. His arms went back around her waist, taking in the scent that he had not gotten to smell for decades.

 

“He deserved it,” Jack bit back at Sorley’s disapproval tone. From their position, Jack could see the time lord in the med bay, quietly letting Owen patch him up. He wouldn’t die, not from that ‘miserable’ amount of injuries. “What is he doing here anyway? He died, did he not?”

 

“The Doctor saved him.”

 

“Saved!?” Jack repeated. “Why on earth would he do that for?” Jack knew the answer before the words out of his mouth. The Doctor would have tried to find redemption for every evil creature, that was the type of man he was, that was why Jack respected the Doctor immensely.

 

Sorley threaded their hands, letting her weight sink into his chest. She didn’t answer his question, without even saying a word, she had known that he had understood. Jack loved that about her. It was impossible not to. She had been there since the beginning, she had seen him at his worst. When he was younger, he couldn’t appreciate her, now that he was older, he cursed the time that he could have had her all wasted away.

 

“So what have you been up to?”

 

“Nothing much. It’s almost time to wake Tommy.” Jack chuckled.

 

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 

The darkness was so thick that Amy’s first reaction was to reach up and check if her eyes were actually open. They were in fact open and that was she belatedly realized that the darkness wasn’t coming from her vision. Now that she had gotten used to the double vision, she found turning one on and off easy. The vision was from Far’qui’er slumped against the white dragon. Through his link, she could feel Bea’l’s worry. They were still in air, Bea’l was tottering on the brink of shutdown and the only thing that was standing in the way of that was his determination to see his rider and passenger were safely on the ground. Amy felt the run of adrenaline and thoughts too abstract for her to understand rushing through the link.

 

Amy had to wake Far’qui’er. That was the one thing she understood from the dragon.

 

Her manicured fingers dug into the saddle for a proper grip to help the unconscious man down onto the ground. “Stay with me!” she scolded the dragon. Bea’l snorted at her in derision, she translated it easily - as if the dragon needed her, a human, to tell him what he had to do.

 

“Can we get back to the… deeeeri?” Amy asked Bea’l, her tongue fumbling over the language. The Doctor explained that occasionally there were words that the Tardis wasn’t capable of translating. Words with too many meanings and implications to translate perfectly. D’eer was one of them. Apparently it meant safe house, breeding grounds, houses, farms, homes, army with Kragions all rolled in one that implies fear and awe because only a certain type of Kragion was able to stay in a D’eer. Amy, being Amy then pointed out that there was a perfectly acceptable word in English - civilization. Bea’l snorted at her in the face. “Okay.” she nodded, oddly understanding the dragon perfectly. She wasn’t sure that she was understanding the dragon perfectly because she was still linked to the Kragion or she had magically understood the dragon. “Let me know when you can attempt the trip.”

 

Amy placed Far’qui’er’s head onto her lap and mimicked how he had initiated the link. Closing her eyes, she tried to focus onto Far’qui’er. It was dark and quiet, the kind that seemed less like being there and the absence of everything else. No that didn’t quite made sense when Amy tried to vocalise it in Far’qui’er’s side.

 

It was vacant or covered, hidden from the body. She could feel the ground where his body lay, the warmth of her thighs through his senses but the undercurrent of thoughts that she had been privy too earlier was absent.

 

‘Far’qui’er?’ Amy thought really hard at him. The books described telepathy to be something like this, not that she’d know of, but it was worth of a try.  She was rewarded with a brief flash of surprise before a sensation like cotton wool. Amy clawed at the sensation and it seemed to come away easily. ‘Far’qui’er? This is Amy. You know...’ she sent an image of the Tardis accidentally.

 

She could feel him struggle, the way one did when their limbs fell asleep, sending pins and needles through the link. ‘Amy.’ He replied at length. ‘There’s been a De’etal. You must find her and...’ he trailed off.

 

A large rock, a dark cave and a woman.

 

‘What do I do after I find that?’ she questioned. Amy shook him another time. He was gone, hidden behind the cotton wool covering.

 

 


	18. Connected through time: The Woman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some Jack side story in this arc. Enjoy!

Jack could feel her breathing on his chest. Each breath she took he memorized it, carving it into the tiny stockpile of memories he had of her with him. The last time he saw her, she had been on the Valiant. The Master had carved her up in front of him, relishing in her screams and his pleads for him to stop or torture him instead. He knew theoretically she would okay but in order not to rouse the Master's attention to her uncommon nature, she had adopted a completely human body which made her susceptible to pain, injury and death. Six months after the Valiant he would dream about her screams, her tears, her whimpering as he came back for another round. Jack would gladly endure pain but it was his helplessness that he could not endure.

He squeezed her tightly. He was glad that the first one he met after the Valiant was this version, the version that was his lover, the one that belonged to him and not to the Doctor. Sorley was okay.

"Jack?" Sorley moved up, pulling the blanket around her naked body and kissed him. "What are you thinking about?"

He covered her smiling lips with his, hands fisting her silky hair, a desperate kiss. It was nothing more than a shift to fit them better, deepening their kiss, her hand slid down his biceps, her lips caving to his probing tongue. Jack tasted her all over again. Her sweet taste. No matter how many people he slept with, the one he always loved had been her. The woman who saved him in his darkest moments, who set him down the path to meet the Doctor, who held his hand when he was just a child. It had always been Sorley.

They finally broke apart, blue eyes meeting green eyes.

"Jack," she murmured huskily. She looked up at him with her wide green eyes, a slow, seductive smile spreading across her face, tracing his jaw with her finger. Jack felt a pool of heat at his groin as her finger reached up to his lips and lingered there.

"Sorley." He kissed her hungrily again. His hands sliding down her bare back, pulling her tighter towards him, his errant right hand inching up her thigh.

Suddenly his mobile phone brust into the shrill tone that Ianto had set for him a month ago. Why were they calling him in the middle of the night?

"Jack Harkness," he answered, stifling the urge to holler at whoever who called him. Surely they could survive a day without him.

"Jack, it's the rift-" Jack wasn't paying attention to Owen anymore, distracted by the gorgeous woman who got off his lap and started putting her clothes on. He whined, motioning her to stop whatever she was doing.

"Jack? Are you listening?"

"Couldn't you just handle this rift without me?" Jack half-heartedly grumbled.

"But it's-" Owen's reply was cut off with Sorley snatching the phone out of his hands.

"Jack will be there in thirty minutes," she said briskly and tossed the phone and his clothes at him. "There. Geron- I mean. Let's go."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Bea'l had managed to stay awake by stabbing himself with on a rock although Amy wasn't sure if he had done it on purpose on in the daze stupor that they had been walking in. If Bea'l was to fall unconscious here, she would have to abandon both dragon and rider and search by herself for whatever that Far'qui'er had instructed her to. She wasn't too excited about that prospect. Armed with neither map nor any means of communication to anyone, Amy would be walking in blind entirely. She wasn't even on Earth and the instructions weren't even clear! All she had was the three images that the Kragion had sent her: A large rock, a dark cave and a woman.

Those weren't even much to go on. Amy lifted her eyes to the horizon. Her feet ached, her calves throbbed, she had long lost track of time. Her breakfast seemed so long ago. The setting of the blue sun told Amy that it had to be dinner time but should couldn't rest yet, not until she found the three things. Urgency had been impressed upon before he passed out, Amy vaguely understood from the dragon that something was or is about to escape and she had to prevent it though she was fairly certain that she would not get there in time.

Bea'l called her with a low growl, pawing at a bunch of plants.

"You want me to eat it?" Amy asked the dragon. "No, you want me to chew it and feed it to Far'qui'er." She looked at the purple plant dubiously. "What would that do?"

The dragon sent a brief tide of images, trying his best to convey his message. "To awake.. No. To.." She raised an eyebrow at the dragon. "You want to awaken him. But you don't mean to rouse him from his slumber." Amy casted another skeptical glance at it before sighing loudly.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"So what were we up to before you came here?" Jack asked, wrapping his arms around her waist and held her close, ceasing her attempts to put his shirt back on. He laid a gentle kiss on the top of her breasts with a teasing smile.

"Well… The Doctor he… found out about me and dumped me on the earth. Lots of things happened, I met several versions of you and spent several decades with the you that chased after the Doctor when he left you on the space station and landed in 1869. I arrived several months later–" Jack interrupted her reply by pressing another kiss. "And we continued our relationship since your time as a time agent. You are abnormally very eager to see me. You weren't even  _that_ excited to see me in 1869 despite not seeing me for three years. It's like you're afraid of letting me out of your sight." Sorley leaned her head against his forehead. "Is something wrong?"

"You can tell me anything, Edward."

Jack closed his eyes briefly. No one had called him by that for hundreds of years that he had forgotten about his real name. "I'm Jack Harkness now or did you forget that?" He replied, deflecting her question with a question.

"No changing topics." She cupped his face, staring intently at his blue eyes. "What happened?"

Sorley had that look that told him she wasn't going to let it go. He had to tell her. He couldn't even brush it off by saying spoilers the way she always did with him. Inside her was the memory of everything that has happened and would happen. She never consciously searched for it, generally letting things happen without trying to see the future, but if she really wanted to, she could. Jack didn't want her to relive the memory more than she needed to. Never again if he had the choice. "The Valiant-" he took a deep breath, bracing himself for the onslaught of memories. "You had to pretend to be a normal human so that the Master would not be suspicious of you. The Master– he tortured you." He gripped her tightly as though afraid she would disappear, holding her tightly, terrified of the memories that still tormented him.

…

**Due to the slightly graphic implications, I have separated this. Should you have no interest in reading it, it would have no effect on the plot by skipping it. Just skip to the next separation.**

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_He was chained. The Master had found it extremely ironic that the one thing he always wanted on in a pathetic human who didn't even want it. Everyday he would find creative ways to kill him. Even that had begun to bore the Master._

_A flash of gold blinded him, but it was the sight of her that terrified him. "Sorley! Get out of here!" He whispered frantically. His heart lurched in his mouth. "Please," Jack begged, shaking his head as she reached for his chains. "Get out. Teleport away now."_

_Sorley paused in her motions at the sound of the door opening. Her features morphing into a black haired girl with green eyes, a flatter and unattractive features. She held his gaze for as long as she could before she was wrenched away from him. She knew what was going to happen. He trembled in fear of what she might know._

_"Oh half breed~ what have you found?" The Master cackled. "Is this your girlfriend?" He trailed a hand down her face._

_His need to protect the woman that was so precious to him overrode his common sense. "Get your hands off her," Jack growled._

_"Tsk tsk. Pets need to be trained. Can't let them bite the hand that feeds them. You understand that right?" The time lord smiled charmingly at Sorley. He motioned to the guards and took the whip proffered by them. "it's so sad that he doesn't even whimper at it anymore. Oh but you... " He glanced at the angry immortal. "But you, you are a whole new story."_

_His hands trailed down her neck as he spoke into her ear, "tell me girl that smells like the vortex, how did you come on board? It's very interesting. You're human yet you appeared from thin air."_

She held him into her embrace, emitting a calm aura. "It's okay Jack, you can stop now," she said softly however Jack was too deep in his memories, reliving the moment the Master begun to torture her in front of him.

_The Master had brought him to a sealed room. She was chained like him but on a metal table. There was too much blood on the table and floor._

" _You know what's interesting?" The Master motioned with a scalpel. "All this blood… is hers. Yet she can't die."_

_He dug the scalpel down her chest. She opened her mouth emitting a silent scream. Her eyes, her green eyes turned to him, staring into his blue eyes, eyes full of hatred._

" _Please." He begged. "Please just torture me, leave her alone."_

" _Ah- but where's the fun in it?" The Master peeled her skin open and clipped it to the sides. Jack could her organs throbbing, wracking in the pain._

" _Please go away. Run away," Jack turned his hot eyes from the sight, a hot salty liquid trickled down his face as he reiterated those two words. "Run away."_

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**You can continue reading from here.**

"No more of that," she smacked him on the head and a light telepathic shock with a smirk, breaking him from his trance. "Now put on your shirt. We're needed at the Hub."

He rubbed his face tiredly. It was two in the morning and somehow Jack knew it was going to be a long day.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The  _thing_  was a long and seemingly endless hallway.

"It's like there's just something with endless hallways and me," muttered Sorley. She placed Trento on her head and felt silly that she was comforted by a rubber duck on her head. "Just you and me, Trento."

She shone the sonic into the dark hallways, carefully picking her way round the unconscious bodies. Judging by the amount of people and the armor and weapons they were wearing, they appeared to be guards of some sort. Guards of what? There were far too many should they be guards. Sorley turned around, analyzing the hallway again. It wasn't just a plain hallway. It was sloping very slightly downwards. The walls were not cool as she expected. They were warm and when she laid her hand on it, she felt it pulse.

Was the ground alive?

She struggled with the bubbling fear. The ground… the earth… the planet… they were alive? Sorley rooted herself to the ground, forcing herself to shove the hysteria downwards. She felt an odd numbness overtaking her. No, it wasn't Sorley, she felt a wry smile twitch on her lips. She was Leya.

Holding up the screwdriver, she flicked through the settings quickly before finding the  _correct_  one. Sorley had seen the Doctor do this when he was Ten, it might not work but it was better than not trying anything. Leya searched the bodies. As expected, they were all carrying a strange diamond. A key of sorts, Sorley helpfully suggested. Her suggestion wasn't implausible so Leya pocketed the diamond and made her way surely down the hallway.

The hallway seemed dissected into two parts and separated by a wooden door. Wood. They searched their memories realizing that during the one week Sorley had been here, neither of them had seen hide or hound of a single metal part. Things that were traditionally in metal was wood or rock. Leya rattled the bars. It was wood but as solid as metal. Why wood? Wood was easier to break through unless you were the Doctor and the only thing you had was a sonic screwdriver. Had the built the place just for the Doctor? In the back of Leya's mind, Sorley scoffed. Who would go through such trouble?

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The Hub was in a state of discord. The alarms were going off with only Tosh and Koschei manning the computers.

"Where's the rest?" asked Sorley, making her way to Koschei. She placed a hand on his shoulder, giving a quick check on his stability. There were still no signs of his energy going haywire yet. Soon she would need to top him up.

"They're out. The Rift swallowed a whole school."

"So? It's night. It'll be messy in the morning, but this is nothing dire." Jack riffled through the pages of reports.

"There was an overnight camp." Koschei said and handed Jack a folder. Inside the folder was the list of 25 students that had been in the school that night.

"Do we know when they ended up in?"

The duo shook their heads. "It's not when. It's where."

Sorley gasped. "Oh god."

"Sorley? Where are you going?" Sorley didn't bother to reply, her mind was busy searching through her past memories. She remembered this. Not because it was part of her 11th dimension memories but because she had experienced this. The children were dying. She remembered dimly realizing that there had been a way of changing their future without messing the rest up. She had to wait for it. Wait for the time when she was on the other side of the mirror.

The lives of the 25 students weighed heavily on her.

She flung the door of the SUV open, waiting impatiently for them to file in. Sorley drove the SUV wildly down the road, not even answering any questions that they pestered her with. Yes, they were going in the opposite direction of the missing school but that was not where the real action was taking place.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Leya stopped at the rock door. She had picked up not one but five other diamonds and they were all shaped differently. On the rock door had six imprints but it wasn't the missing diamond that stopped her. The rock door was open. Why?

Sorley told her to go back to the Doctor, but what could she do if she went back to the Doctor? Leya didn't think the Doctor would be conscious now. She had to figure what was making them unconscious and deactivate it. A device of sorts, her logic mind suggested. All the people that had passed out were telepathic. There was no reason to doubt that it was a device or a virus that only targeted telepaths.

The man had pointed in a vague motion, she had deduced that she was indeed going down the right way. The ground had been growing warmer as she made her way further down, following the heat rather than scent or sound through the multiple hallways.

Disregarding the fear that was causing an tremble in her limbs, Leya stepped through the door and averted her eyes from the ground. She had not seen a guard for awhile now and the Kragion on the ground was beyond doubt that he was dead. Whoever who came had literally tore him apart. Someone incredibly strong and silent, judging by Kragion's undrawn weapon. She didn't know if it would help, but Leya took the strange wooden gun anyway.

"Is there anyone there?" She called out. Her steps echoed loudly in the deafening silence. "Anyone?" She heard it and confirmed it. Behind her was echoing was another set of steps, too light to be the Doctor's and too close by to be not a threat. Sorley prayed it was Amy but knew it didn't make sense.

"Who is it?" She demanded, whirling around with the gun stretched out.

A woman was standing behind her. Hair black as night and trailed on the ground, her eyes were shimmering gold, her ears were pointy.

Were there elves on this planet? Leya found no answers except that this woman was the only probable reason for the torn guards she had found. She was so small and lithe that it seemed impossible.

Nothing was impossible, just a bit unlikely.

"Was it you?" Leya asked.

The woman smiled. "They're dead, aren't they?"

Leya pointed the sonic screwdriver at the woman. "Answer me! Was it you who killed the guards?"

"What are you going to do if I said it was me?" she looked at her nails that were far too short for the nail trails Leya had seen on the corpses. "Are you going to kill me, Doctor?"

Leya raised an eyebrow at her assumption. The sonic screwdriver? She thought she was the Doctor because of the sonic screwdriver? NO. Leya pulled herself together. The fact she knew the Doctor (and his sonic screwdriver) and the very passive aggressive tone indicated that there was some history.

"You know me." Leya shrugged.

"Yes I do." The woman took a step forward and she unconsciously stepped backwards. "I know you're not the Doctor. You are Sorley."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"Rory is going to kill me," She muttered, chewing the purple fruit. It tasted like chlorine peach flavoured chalk, if that was possible. Covering his lips with hers, she forced the positively noxious fruit pulp into his mouth. Amy took another bite of the fruit, forcing the Kragion to eat several fruits. His lips were weathered and flakey, Amy was reminded of the time when she had 'become a kissogram'. It wasn't her proudest moments when she had caved into peer pressure and said that if they were going to think she was a slot or what not, her 'summer job' might as well be something similar. It hadn't lasted more than two engagements and she had slapped the client on the face when he had squeezed her but. Of course she had taken the costumes as compensation when her employer refused to pay for the previously completed engagement, oddly the employer never bothered to forced to return them and was even terrified of her later.

Far'qui'er shuddered and twitched. "Bea'l!" Amy glanced at the dragon. The dragon was shaking and shuddering, gasping for breath.

"Oh my god! What's going on!?"

Far'qui'er's body grew fainter like mist in the morning sun. "Far'qui'er!?" Amy tried to grab onto him. "Bea'l!"

The dragon howled, a loud gut-twisting whine. It pawed the ground, its wings seized by the twitching swooped several trees down. The skies darkened in the twilight, the eerie red moon was high in the sky casting a red glow down onto them. Far'qui'er had disappeared. There was nothing left of him.

Amy had killed him.


	19. Connected through time: The Doctor and The Maven

Sorley handed them shovels and started point at spots of the ground. "Quickly!" Sorley commanded, driving the shovel frantically into the ground.

"Sorley?" asked Koschei with a frown. He took the shovel and began digging at one of the specified spots. "Why are we digging?"

He stared at her, her back was bent in concentration, arms tirelessly shoveling dirt into the growing pile of displaced soil. Koschei reminded himself that she was the Tardis even if she didn't seem to act like one at the moment. He had only seen so much of her, the possibility of the math working still boggled him. Though he had tried to do the calculations back on the Tardis, something had happened that caused the math to work. What had succeeded when everything else had failed?

His arms continued digging as his mind spiraled in the equations of probability, behind he noticed Jack glaring at him. He would have to do something to alleviate Jack's anger. The future Jack said he had done something. Koschei shook Jack out of his thoughts. He was getting sidetracked. He used to be able to focus better. The drumming in his head never allowed room for sidetracking. Pausing in his motions, he realized the low hum he had been repeating was the beat of the drums. His lips curled in disgust upon his realization, he missed beats. How pathetic.

The Doctor had sacrificed himself to rescue him from the drums and here he missed it. Koschei wondered, not for the first time, if the drums had been truly a parasite that had taken over him as the Doctor told him or had it brought out the darkness in him. From the corner of his eye, Koschei watched Jack shovel, the damp hair plastering on the sides of his head, his jaw clenched as he went through the repetitive motions. He didn't want to remember but he did; the hot thick blood in his hands, the organs beating in his hands, the screaming that sent him into ecstasy. The shame of taking such sadistic pleasure flooded through him. He was not the same man as he was on the ship, Koschei shook his head, eyes catching his hands. Still it was the very same hands that had murdered billions, even if a selected few remembered, even if it was an expired paradox, even if the lives of those lost were returned, he still could not say he was not a murderer.

Lost in his spiraling thoughts, Koschei was shaken from his reverie by Tosh's loud holler.

"Found something!" A dull metallic smell filled the air. Rubidium? No, smelt like Styerium. Definitely not something from this world. Edging towards them, he saw underneath the dark twilight sky that it was a metal dome. The soil gave way to a large 5 metre by 5 metre metal capsule.

"What is that?" Tosh asked.

"It's a teleportation capsule." Koschei answered, his hands hovering around the side with his laser screwdriver searching for the opening. There was none- a perfectly sealed off capsule. He adjusted his screwdriver settings, this time for a more forceful entry, his mind calculating the equations for a forced entry without destroying too much of the circuits. Behind he heard Tosh question with his ever superior time lord hearing.

"How did you know they were there?"

"Sorley's Sorley." Jack smiled. Koschei had seen him kiss her and act lovingly to her. Was Sorley not the Doctor's wife? He puzzled over it. He was sidetracking again. A pang of guilt shot through him as he found himself missing the blasted drum beats. He turned back to the capsule, carefully adjusting in time with the clicks that echoed within the capsule. It was sort of like lockpicking except with a laser screwdriver.

A panel slid open and the console lit up as it recognized that someone had entered. A 108th century human capsule.

"You always say that," Tosh heaved a sigh as they approached the open panel. Her device beeping in time with its slow archaic speed. If he stayed long enough, he may want to mod their devices, Koschei filed a mental note away. "It doesn't explain anything."

Was she here to investigate or to talk? Humans. Always busy gossiping.

"Sorley's a league on her own. It's complicated to explain why she knows things." Jack shrugged.

It was a complicated explanation and she would not understand half of it. Koschei understood his reluctance in explaining. Sorley was right at his elbow when he turned to call for Tosh. She laid a hand on the panel and it popped into life, data speeding through the monitor.

"Jack, Tosh!" She pushed them into the capsule and they narrowly missed the door that slammed shut behind them. "Good luck! Look after Koschei, Jack!"

Jack hammering at it. "Sorley! What are you doing!? Sorley! Sorley! Sorley!" He whirled around to Koschei, stormy eyes catching his more subdued ones, it wasn't typical of time lords to be overly emotional. He was rapidly pressing buttons to stop the flight take off that Sorley had begun.

Locked. It was locked in with bio quantum mechanical password. The process was unstoppable for they were in flight now to stars knows where.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

She was burning, burning in a misery of smoke and dust.

Burning, burning, burning.

She didn't know how long she was burning. Her memory was beginning to loop. It would have never succeeded. She knew it. She saw it. She saw herself dying. Death by choice, death by will. She was coming apart, splintering from the side. The misguided one saw it, she let it happen. She stood there staring into her. She could hear the misguided one. The whispers in her mind, the glimpse of the future she saw. It was not the future she saw, it was the universe she saw. The entirety of the universe sewn into her as she jumped through the vortex.

Dying.

She was burning, burning in a ball of fire, burning the futures of past and present. Consuming everything as she burnt. She was not supposed to die like this. She had to leave, she had to escape to the graveyard. Save the world. Save the universe. Bring it back. She had to reset it. The futures, present and past streamed into a thin rope. She saw it as future became present, present became history and looped.

Her thief was gone. She will have to save Time. She whispers. The Moment hears her. The Moment sees her. She is the Moment, she became, becomes, is becoming the Moment. She no longer the Tardis and neither is the Flower, the Bad Wolf anymore. They are all part of her but she is not them.

Changing the time lines, recreating the universe. They see her. They see what she's become. They play the Game like a chess. They played her thief like a chess. He lost, they said. Play the game, they told her. Play the Game and win and they will reset the board. Play the game and win and they will leave her in peace. The Moment tells her she has no choice. The Moment and them do not understand. The Game never stopped running. The players have changed but it was the same Game.

She sees this as she is burning. She knows what she must do. They play her, the Moment plays her. But she is played by no one and this is where they will lose.

She was burning, burning in a misery of smoke and dust but she is not dying.

She is transforming.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The dark twilight sky was gone, replaced by a sky with a strange crimson moon when they exited the capsule. Wide plains stretched on as far as his eye could see. Not just any desert or planet, Koschei reached down, hands running through the damp soil. Dark purple soil, he savored the air.

"Sorento Magnus, fifth moon." He announced, moving from his crouching position to a casual standing posture. "Probably very early days of this moon." He bounced on the spot, feeling the odd springiness in the ground.

"Couldn't you bring us back?" Jack asked, making sure that Tosh did not wander away. She stood there staring at the large red moon that hung heavily over the desolated plains.

"We're not on- on- on- Earth!" Tosh stammered before taking her phone out to take a picture. "Owen would be so jealous."

Humans. On an alien planet and all they could think of was to either go back home or take pictures. Koschei ran his hand through his hair in exasperation. Just twelve hours away from the Doctor and he was already missing the intellect of another time lord. He had no idea how the Doctor had managed to put up with such dull creatures.

"What are you doing here?" A male voice asked in disbelief. Koschei spun around and came face to face with the Doctor. Curly brown hair, green velvet jacket, he couldn't remember the last time he saw the Doctor in this regeneration. "What are you planning?" his blue eyes flickered to Jack and Tosh. "Who are they?" The Doctor stepped up into his face, staring angrily into his brown eyes. "I won't let you hurt a single one of them. I warn you."

"Tetchy aren't you?" Koschei replied.

"I'm always  _tetchy_  when I see you, Master."

"Ooo. I love it when you call me that," a sly grin flickered across his face. The smile instantly dropping his face, his stomach lurched as he realized what he had just said. "Sorry, I didn't mean," he palmed his face. "It's just-"

The drums weren't a parasite right? It was all him, wasn't it? The Doctor died to save him but he wasn't worth saving. He was breathing harder than he usually was, a corner of his mind coolly noting that he if he didn't pull his breathing under control he was going to hyperventilate. A raspy gasp escaped his mouth as he struggled to slow his breath. He wasted a good man's life!

_One, two, three, four._

"NO!" Koschei hurled himself to the ground, chest heaving. It was his imagination.

"What in the Gallifrey is wrong with you?" the Doctor asked. His sonic screwdriver buzzing as he scanned Koschei. "Are you alright?" he pulled Koschei to a sitting position, pulling his face up to check his eyes.

"N-not Master anymore," Koschei replied, feeling like the words were being ripped from his lips. "I- am- Koschei." He stared into the Doctor's brown eyes. "I am Koschei," he repeated, trying to impress the Doctor with the knowledge that he wasn't plagued by the damn drums.

A small spark of hope swam in the Doctor's eyes and it was crushed by the cold guarded look that Koschei had been accustomed to seeing when directed at him. "Really."

Jack coughed loudly. "Koschei. Who is that?"

The Doctor got up and marched to them, checking them for wounds or trauma that the Master might have inflicted on them. "Did he blackmail you or coerce you?" He asked upon noticing Jack's hateful eyes towards Koschei.

"He was helping us identify alien things when the alarms went off and the others went to check while he was trying to scan the rift for other activities. Oh no! Ianto. Owen. Gwen. The children," Tosh burst into the tears. "They're dead aren't they? Why are we here? Why did Sorley send us here?"

"Who are you?" Jack pressed.

Taken aback by her sudden emotional distress the Doctor patted her awkwardly. "I'll save them. I'm the Doctor. You need to tell me what happened before you got here."

He glared at Koschei. Koschei hadn't done anything but his track record wasn't good. The Doctor's eighth regeneration wouldn't know. He turned back to the console. Sorley had locked it but he was the genius engineer of Gallifrey and that had to be something.

"Where is the Tardis?" Koschei asked. They were digging for two hours straight and stuck in the warm desert night, the humans would be getting dehydrated by now. The Tardis would be able to feed them and send them back.

"Are you going to try to steal the Tardis again?"

"No. The humans should be thirsty." He replied, not even bothering to turn around to talk to the Doctor properly.

"I'm not letting them on the Tardis. Who knows what you've blackmailed them with. I'm not a fool, Master. The last time I saw you, you jumped into the Eye. How did you survive?"

"It's Koschei, Theta."

"Don't call me that-" The Doctor motioned angrily, buzzing his screwdriver over the console. "You don't get to call me that anymore. For hundreds of years, I held to my promise-"

"Are you stopping?" Koschei asked quietly.

"What?"

"The Vow! Are you ending it now?" He spun around, straightening up. The Doctor stood at the doorway, one hand in the pocket, the other holding the screwdriver like some weapon. "Are you giving up on me?" he demanded.

The Doctor gaped at him. His cheeks flushed. "I'll have you know that I've never broken a single of my vow."

"I release you."

"What?"

"I release you!" he said again louder.

"Bloody well will you. I'll never stop pursuing you, Master. You'll do well to remember that. I never break my vows."

"Are you going to wait for me to kill you before you stop?"

"A bit late for that. You've already killed me quite a few times." He said with a soft chuckle.

"Guys…" Jack's voice called out from outside the capsule.

"You should give up before I kill you permanently." Koschei stood face to face with the Doctor. They were breathing hard from their tirade.

"If it means stopping you, I will continue. Even if it means my death," the Doctor told him.

"Doctor! Koschei! Help!" Jack hollered.

"Jack!" Koschei pushed pass the Doctor, body sliding over to Jack to grab him before he fell into the crevice. "Hold on!"

"What do you think I'm doing!" He held his arm around a pointed edge, the other arm holding tightly onto Tosh's hand.

"Rope!" The Doctor tossed Koschei a lasso that he pulled from his pocket. Koschei swung it at Tosh as Jack's grip slipped and they plunged into the crevice. The rope sailed into the inky darkness, missing its intended targets. Staring into the darkness, the once murderer made a vow - a vow to save billions more, to right the wrongs of his yesteryears even if it was too multitudinous or extensive.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"Are you okay?" a familiar voice asked. "Look at me." A hand tilted his face up, blinding him with a horribly bright light. "Bloody hell! Jack? What the bloody hell are you doing here?"

"Owen?" Jack groaned. "Tosh!" He sat up, turning around frantically. As if he would be able to see anything in this darkness. "Tosh!"

"I'm here." She appeared with a blinding huge torch light.

"Where did you get-"

"It's you again!" a gruff voice groaned loudly, rudely interrupting his question. An old man stepped into the light, trailing behind him was another equally tall but far younger man. "Can you please stop appearing in front of me. I'd very much not like to see you again, Jack. No. I will not have drinks with you." He tucked his hands into his pocket, the satin red inner of the his suit gleaming in the powerful torch light. He held his screwdriver at Jack and seemed satisfied by his results.

The younger man looked upwards, his dark hair was combed back, his pale blue eyes seemed luminous in the bright torch light. "Maven, did anyone else fall?" The old man asked the younger man, his brushy eyebrows frowning in thought. He bounced on the ground several times and buzzed it with the sonic screwdriver before putting some of the soil into his mouth.

"No. Just him and Tosh. You should remember too, you know. " Maven replied. His voice was deep and husky, smooth with an almost seductive purr. Like a jaguar hiding in a cello, Jack commented in his head.

"Metallic. I taste Ocarium. Ocarium. Been on this planet before." The old man's blue eyes hovered on Jack before turning away to fiddle with something he took out from his pocket. "That can't be right."

"No. It makes perfect sense. Amy said three times. You were there on the second. This is the first." The Maven pursed his thin lips. His fingers were slender and long, tucked on the sides of the pocket of trousers, the long olive green trenchcoat swished as the Maven turned cocked his head at the old man. "What is so special about this planet? It's just the fifth moon of Sorento Magnus. Sorento Magnus is not famous for anything."

"No they were."

"Who are you guys? Where did you come from? How the hell did this thing appear?" Jack motioned to the darkness and by that extend, the hole that he and Tosh had fallen into.

"I'm the Doctor, he's the Maven, Sorley's behind with the Gwen, Ianto and the children." The old man grimaced at the word children as though he had taken a very bitter pill. "Sorento Magnus was famous for the collapse of the lunamic system. Borusa mentioned it." He continued as though Jack was not there.

"Styerium!" The two exclaimed together.

"It would be the same thing that is interfering with the vortex conduit." The Maven added, showing the small metal device to the Doctor. If Jack was correct, the Maven was holding onto a sonic screwdriver as well. Did time lords really like  _sonic_ screwdrivers that much?

"Gwen and Ianto are okay? Wait, there's two of you?" Jack raised an eyebrow and pointed upwards. "Can't imagine what I'm thinking of now. Captain Jack Harkness by the way." He flashed a smile and held his hand out at the Maven who merely glanced at Jack's outstretched hand with wry amusement.

The Doctor frowned at him. "Jack."

"Just introducing myself!" Jack didn't need to see the Doctor to know he was rolling his eyes as he groaned at his response. "You got yourself a pretty boy." He eyed the Maven, tall with sharp cheekbones and those piercing eyes.

"That's enough Jack," the Doctor pulled out a device, buzzing his screwdriver at it. "We have enough problems without you adding to it."

"Anything?" The Doctor asked the Maven. The Maven shook his head, buzzing his device at the ground before holding up two fingers. Jack didn't understand but somehow the Doctor did. The Doctor pushed Owen and Tosh roughly away, ordering them to back away as far as they could. "Hold on! Two seconds!"

The ground rumbled beneath them, cracks emerging from the earth. The Maven gripped tightly on Jack's arm, holding him tightly in their spot. The ground had fallen away from around them and somehow the Doctor and the Maven had known where they were standing was safe. Owen and Tosh too were safe but were standing on the other side of the rift.

"Are you okay?" Jack hollered.

"It's too far for them to jump, they'll have to go back to Sorley. They'll be safe there," the Doctor said. Owen and Tosh reluctantly made their way back to Sorley and Gwen.

"How did you know that that was going to happen?" Jack asked the duo after they had left.

"Oh be quiet. Let us think. Humans, always yakking away," grumbled the Doctor. The Maven, like the Doctor, was busy fiddling with a device. "The capacitors are detecting a series nanowave pulses in the styerium outersphere."

"Mine is reading the same too. I believe it's the pico plasmas resonating with the styerium that's interfering with the vortex conduit."

The Doctor grunted unhappily at the Maven's words. "We need to go down further. I found some time-matter energy."

"What's going on? Please explain."

"Jack, we can't use the tardis or the teleporter to get out of here or this planet. Something- The pico plasmas" The Doctor corrected himself at the Maven's stern look. "is interfering with the vortex conduit. The engines in other words. We need to find this interference and fix it so we can get out of here."

"What about Sorley? Can't she… do something?"

The Doctor heaved a large sigh. "Do you not pay attention? The thing is interfering with the vortex conduit. Sorley is a humanoid Tardis. She's not some all-mighty goddess. Don't give me that look!" He pointed at the Maven.

"Yet every time I walk into the kitchen, I catch you two snogging." The Maven remarked.

"There's a time and place for these kind of conversations," the Doctor gritted his teeth at the Maven.

"There's a time and place for these kind of activities. Generally, the bedroom."

"Pain help me," The Doctor muttered. The Maven nodded with a small knowing smirk and jumped down into the darkness with the Doctor following after him. Without much of a choice and even if he had, Jack would have picked the same choice, he jumped after them chortling loudly.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Amy's double vision was still not gone. She could see out of Far'qui'er's eyes and they were looking at her at a height. Amy turned around looking for Far'qui'er only to catch Bea'l's look and found herself looking back at herself.

"Far'qui'er?" she said hesitantly.

' _Yes. It is me.'_  Bea'l replied. His voice echoing in her mind.

"How are you… there?"

' _The dragon riders swear a vow that is unbreakable. They are the dragon and the rider.'_

"So… you're not dead? Your body disappeared."

' _No. Rather that disappeared, it was absorbed into Bea'l.'_

"Are you stuck like that forever?" She scrutinized the dragon. Apart from it being larger than it was, there was nothing different.

' _Conditions must align to separate mind and soul. I knew this would happen when I brought you to the prophecy.'_  He lay on the ground and urged her to climb up with his large wings.  _'We are the guards of Mother. We're far more than just dragons.'_

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

It was dark and damp but not cold when they landed. Jack had expected himself to be smashed against the ground or the rocks having fallen into a free fall for a period of time. Instead the ground was soft and squishy, almost seeming comforting. It was dark but the ground was lit with a dull red rock that cast a creepy glow onto the Doctor and his companion. There was a lady sitting in the middle of several tall rocks, with a multitude of metallic devices surrounding her.

Her vivid red lips curled into a sinister-looking smile. "Doctor." She greeted. Her hair was so red that it almost seemed like on fire. "Remember me?" Her eyes danced in merriment at the Doctor's confusion.

"Can't recognize me without the gallifreyan consciousness?" She leaned forward in her seat, her long fingers clasping her exposed knee. "Oh Doctor, Doctor. The Oncoming Storm, the Great Exterminator, Destroyer of Worlds, Murderer of our people."

"He didn't murder them." The Maven interjected.

"And you'd know because?"

"I was there. I haven't seen you for a long time. How did you survive the time war?"

The lady blinked, confusion clouding her gold eyes. "Who are you? Why do I not recognize you?"

"Yes. It's a long story. One that I'm not inclined to share."

"Wait wait wait. You THREE are time lords?" Jack exclaimed. The three time lords turned to him with a look that could only say ' _are you really that slow?'_  in varying degrees of contempt. "Captain Jack Harkness, by the way." He flashed a flirtatious smile. The red hair reminded him of Sorley but her eyes were cold and calculative.

"Still travelling with humans?" she sneered. "I suppose that'd be quite the usual routine for you, Doctor. Where is your Tardis? Having engine problems?"

The Doctor scanned the devices. "That's not right. None of these are active. Then what is causing the problem?"

"This regeneration is rather dull, don't you think?" She said. The Maven on the other was not even paying attention to the devices was scanning her. His mind was leaping into great bounds. Probably a trap but why a trap. The Maven's screwdriver picked up an active device on her. "You're pretty smart. Time lord, judging by the dual hearts. So you graduated from the academy."

"I was the top of my class too. Now hand me the device."

She laughed a single mirthless laugh. "The Master was the top of… You're the Master?" Her smile faded, eyes flicking back and forth the two time lords. "How? The Doctor said you jumped into the eye. He brought back your ashes. The council confirmed that your consciousness was no longer around."

"And you were said to have perished in the Time War. Yet you are here." The Maven smiled a sardonic smile.

"Maven, do you know who she is?"

"Do you not recognize her?" The Maven replied with a slight frown. "Which regeneration are you on?"

"Fourth. You?"

"Too many to count." The Maven said. "The Council granted me a new cycle at the beginning of the Time War. They had great plans for me. The device, now."

"You're too late!" She laughed. "You were never the real targets." She traced a finger down her face. "Poor Doctor. Time to say goodbye to your Tardis."

She wiggled her fingers and disappeared in a flash.

"Stars! Hologram shell!" The Maven swore loudly. "The device was a hologram conscious imprinter!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to clarify some things.
> 
> I did some research (I always do a massive amount of research), so there's some contradiction on the Time Lords physiology. Some say Gallifreyans are born with two hearts, some said that they were born with one heart and got their second on their first regeneration. With some in-depth research, not all gallifreyans are 'time lords' as 'time lords' are only people who graduated from the academy. Not all gallifreyans get to go to the time lord academy too. Time lord academy is pretty much "furthering" their studies.
> 
> Another note. Pain & Death are actual canon deities on Gallifrey.
> 
> Just to note, this is a converging plot. It should start make more sense in the oncoming chapters. I'm breaking them up so it's less confusing. This is pretty much AU and I have no plans of having Missy as of now.
> 
> Also YAY for the Maven! I'm super excited to have him in this arc because.. gee. Because he's pretty much like Benedict Cumberbatch's Khan. Looks included. I snorted when I wrote "I AM KOSCHEI!" reminded me of the Khan's speech (on Star Trek)
> 
> "I AM KHAN!" Almost wanted to name this chapter as "I am Koschei!"


	20. Connected through time: The Neverweres

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Time Lords fight it out and Koschei has a strange revelation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary of what happened so far:
> 
> The 11th Doctor, Amy and Sorley landed themselves in Sorento Magnus, 5th Moon. They get captured by the natives there and witness a Hatching.
> 
> Amy is brought to view the prophecy that had been there long before the planet was born. She and the native, Far'qui'er, establishes a telepathic connection that allows her to be mentally and physically connected to him. While she is on the way back to the stronghold, a telepathic attack takes place causing all the telepathic beings to be knocked unconscious. She is tasked to find three things by the native as he is struggling to hold on his consciousness: a large rock, a dark cave and a woman. Amy under the order of the dragon, feeds Far'qui'er a purple fruit that causes his body to disappear and merge with the dragon.
> 
> Sorley who was in the stronghold when the attack take place tries to figure what the native was trying to say before they all collapsed and hopefully awaken/revive all the telepathic beings. She meets a woman in the hallways that knows her.
> 
> Meanwhile Koschei who sacrificed himself to destroy the Dalek ship in 1941 (Winston Churchill episode) was saved by 100,000+ year old Sorley. He meets young River, student of Luna University, who is stalking the Doctor. He is then brought to younger Jack who is fresh out of the Valiant. A younger Sorley (roughly 300+) appears and comforts Jack. The rift is opened and swallows a whole school along with the 25 students in the school. Sorley knowing where the story is, brings them to a spot to unearth a teleportation capsule and sets it off with Tosh, Jack and Koschei in it. The three exit the capsule and find themselves on early days of Sorento Magnus, 5th moon. They meet the 8th Doctor who is suspicious of Koschei's motives of travelling with two humans. Before the Doctor can decide to trust them, a rift suddenly opens under Jack and Tosh and sends them falling.
> 
> Jack and Tosh is strangely uninjured by the fall. In the crevice, they meet the 12th Doctor, the Maven (who is the older Koschei and has picked a new title to go by) and Owen. Another rift opens up and splits Jack, 12th Doctor and the Maven, and Tosh and Owen on two sides. Tosh and Owen agree to meet up with Ianto, Gwen and Sorley who are guarding the children while Jack, 12th Doctor and Maven would go and resolve the issue at hand. Jack, 12th Doctor and the Maven jump down the rift only to meet a time lady who was clearly expecting them. She tricks them and disappears to steal the Doctor's Tardis.
> 
> And now you're all caught up.
> 
> -x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
> 
> Extra info: (if you're interested, not really important)
> 
> 8th Doctor still views Koschei as the Master because Koschei only became a better man late in the 10th Doctor's regeneration. The Master made the Doctor promise to stop him from destroying people/worlds
> 
> The Maven is technically Koschei's third regeneration who by the way received a fresh round of regeneration cycle during the Time war (Canon). 1st regen – Yana, 2nd regen – The Master (Valiant), 3rd regen – The Maven. His regenerations are referred accordingly to their state: Koschei (2nd regen & somewhat a good man), The Maven (3rd regen & good man), The Master (for any of his other regens & evil), but this wouldn't matter because his past regens will not appear.

**Bold**  – Gallifreyan speech

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Koschei flung himself to the capsule that they arrived in, his mind running different diagrams of how he could fix the capsule to teleport them downwards.

"What are you doing?" The Doctor demanded.

"If I adjust the photonic circuits to align with the energy plasmas and re-route the charge APD digital cables, it'd disable bio quantum password and I might have a chance to loop back in time and pick them up in mid-air." Koschei turned back to the Doctor.

The Doctor stared at him in disbelief. "You're afraid for them. What are they to you? The Master I know wouldn't care for humans."

"I'm not  _The Master_  anymore. I'm Koschei! They are the Doctor's companions! I have to save them."

"D-Doctor? I'm the Doctor and I've never seen them before."

Koschei tore the panel apart, pulling the wires out as he calculated it. He was the genius of Gallifrey, he be definitely be able to overwrite a Tardis's programming. "You're a bloody time traveller. Haven't you figured it out yet?"

The Doctor hauled Koschei out as the ground opened up again. "Ok. Okay. I had a theory before you all arrived."

The ground around them was breaking up almost as though it was trying to swallow them. The cracks following them as the two time lords ran across the desert, trying to avoid falling into the crevice.

"I think this moon is alive."

"Somehow that doesn't comfort me." Koschei muttered. "That's impossible. History said that the 8 moons of Sorento Magnus were never alive. Were you sleeping throughout all your history lessons?"

"No…" Koschei shot the Doctor a look. "Okay, maybe I did for a large portion of it." The Doctor admitted.

They jumped over another crevice that seemed to try to cut them off but this time, the crevice opened up as though it had expected them to do just that. They were falling, free-falling into the dark hole and the only thing that ran through Koschei's mind was ' _Bloody stars. I'm going to kill the Doctor.'_

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"Maven. You recognized her. Who is she?" The Doctor demanded.

"She's Rani. You really didn't recognize her?"

The Doctor frowned. Jack watched the two Time Lords scan the surroundings with their screwdrivers. The old man was the Doctor and the younger man was the Maven. He had never met this incantation of the Doctor though he was not terribly surprised by that. The Doctor had frequently gone out of his way of not meeting him, Sorley was the one who brought tidbits about him but she hadn't mentioned the Maven. Who was he?

"Have I met you before, Maven?" Jack asked after a moment of silence of following closely behind them.

"Oh yes. Jack, I spent a good two hundred years with you. Trust me, it was time not well-spent." Jack could hear the sarcasm and eye-rolling. The Maven tinkered with something he pulled out of his pocket, a sort of gadget.

"Humans, always wanting to do this when we are facing some danger." The Doctor muttered, licking the side of the cliff. "We can climb here, I believe."

The Doctor made his way up the cliff before falling back onto his butt by a well-timed tug from Maven. "What's it like in your brain, Doctor? It must be so calm and placid." The Maven motioned to Jack's VM. "This brings back memories, doesn't it Jack? Me, you, Sorley stuck in the pocket universe." He looked up, his pale blue eyes scanning Jack's for a sign of recognition. "Too early I suppose."

The familiar light that signalled ready for teleportation flashed. "I really rather climb up." The Doctor whined as he gripped onto Jack's arm. "I hope you set it-"

The darkness around them blinked before the Doctor could enter another of his winding rambles that Jack had begun to notice. This regeneration of the Doctor's really liked to ramble.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Two things happened as Koschei landed at the bottom of the crevice. First the ground was a lot softer than he expected and second he felt the buzz of not one but two other telepathic presence around him.

"Just in time. The younger you as you said so," The old man quipped as they appeared in front of them. "Let's hurry now."

"Doctor?" Koschei asked, confused. He turned around, almost knocking his head into the eighth Doctor.

"If he's me, then who's he?" the eighth Doctor pointed at the tall, black haired man.

"Maven, third regen of the Master. He's good now, denounced his previous title." The twelfth Doctor answered.

"Wait. He's the Master?" Jack turned angrily towards Maven.

"Get over it Jack. You can discuss it at length with M- I mean Koschei here. We have bigger issues now. Rani." The twelfth Doctor motioned to Koschei. "Sorley!" He hurried down the dark path, stumbling every once in a while.

Koschei, ostensibly ignoring Jack's glares, tried to warn Sorley telepathically. "What's the Rani doing?" The eighth Doctor demanded. There was no time for casual conversation. The young Doctor understood that with all the urgency and implications should they fail with that single name. Koschei remembered how it had been in the past. It had always been that way in the Academy and even more so after they graduated. He had always been the doom and gloom, and hell bent on world (universe actually) domination while unconsciously actively trying to refrain from actually succeeding; the Rani on the other hand had been clear in the mind, never really caring about moralities and all the trivialities. Science was her one true god.

The smell of blood flooded the air as they seemed to approach their destination. Ianto supine on the ground, his hand clutching his leg.

"Ianto!" Jack slid to his side, flustered. "Stay with me!" Jack ordered, tearing bits of his shirt to bind the wound.

Ianto wheezed, gripping Jack's forearm tightly, mumbling to Jack, things that Koschei would have and should have heard but the sense of something in front of them drowned all other senses but the feeling the prickling cold fear in his heart.

He did not need to see them to sense them. The memory of them was engraved into deepest parts of him that he refused to acknowledge. The surge of memories of the Time War rose to the foreground of his mind, knocking him still for a brief instant. Koschei heaved a tremulous breath, willing himself to not shrink away despite the cool logic in him demanded him to.

"What have you done?" the words tore from his mouth as he staggered forward, putting one foot in front of another.

Above the eerie glow of the red moon crept through the deep cervices, casting strange shadows that the  _things_  that stood beside the Rani. They were like him.

They were Time Lords.

The older Doctor beside him was in an outrage, furiously yelling at the Rani. Koschei never shifted his stare from the  _things_. They were things. No longer mortal, no longer Time Lords.

"Calm yourself," the deep and very composed voice of his older regen broke through his inner babbling war. "They are a forgotten story." The Maven continued at his preoccupied assertion on hearing his words. "Just like the Toclafane."

He whipped his head around so fast, that he almost got a whiplash. Blue eyes of his older self staring gravely into his brown eyes, a knowing look in his eyes.

"You remember how it goes right?"

Koschei turned back to the fight that was developing into a full-blown war. Jack staggered as the creepy once-time-lord pulled his claws out of his abdomen. Jack screamed, emptying a magazine into the head of the  _thing._  Not that it would do any good. The bullets pushed themselves out of  _its_  head, the broken skin reforming back into the pale flawless skin.

It was like the Time War all over again.

The Council resurrected him. He had been flippant about the whole resurrection thing, brushing it off as a joke or a side note, refusing to come to terms with the memory of it. The darkness, the feeling of being unravel and sewn back. Parts that were him, parts that weren't. He pulled himself together, forcing his mind back to the present.

" **Cease your fighting,** " Koschei ordered in a dispassionate voice, belying the bile that threatened to spill from his throat. He swallowed thickly, watching the  _things_  peel themselves from Jack and the two Doctors. " **Stop the Time Lord named the Rani.** "

They bowed at him before spinning to the direction that Rani had wandered off after ordering them to stop the intruders.

"Not that I'm not grateful for that.. but what the hell was that?" Jack pulled himself upright, glancing at Ianto who had now stopped bleeding with the Maven's assistance.

"You just commanded those  _creatures_  to leave. Were you waiting for them to actually kill us before casually stopping them?" the eighth Doctor spat out venomously.

The eighth Doctor were still calling them creatures. He wouldn't have met them yet. It was then Koschei realized how everything was so screwed up. They were chasing the Rani for star's sake. The Rani was here. The Rani had  _commanded_  them.

"You didn't tell me you could command the Neverweres," the twelfth Doctor shot the Maven a look.

"Is that what those creatures were?" The eighth Doctor scoffed. They were still tripping every darkened rock in the dark red glow of the moon.

"You didn't tell me you met them in your eighth regen," the Maven shot back. The Maven was him but if he could command the Neverweres, why didn't his older self do so earlier?

"Yea, but thanks to someone stealing my lindo packets, my eighth regen suffered memory issues. That's why I barely remember anything of this." The Doctor casted his sonic screwdriver around. "What happens next?" He asked, cutting through the heavy silence.

The Maven sighed loudly. "Sorley."

Then a scream that felt like it could curdle even his blood pierced through the darkness.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Short chp to round up things and next chapter will be the last of this CTT arc (not the end of the story). I kinda like Koschei more and more.


End file.
